Dateline Originals - Dateline Missing in America – Ep. 25: Marked with an X

Episode Date: September 5, 2025

It was the early morning hours of May 20, 2017, and 15-year-old Sophie Reeder should have been in bed. Instead, she had slipped out of her house in the River Oaks neighborhood of Fort Lauderdale and walked off into the hot, humid night. Two security cameras recorded some of Sophie’s movements over the next several hours. One recorded her walking past a neighbor’s house as she started her journey; another recorded her walking along a busy road near her home at 2 a.m. In that video, a police cruiser passes the 5-foot-1, 100-pound teenager and doesn’t slow down or stop. Sophie is seen wearing a short black dress, high-top sneakers, a leopard-print fake fur coat, and headphones. They are the last known images of her. Seven weeks after Sophie’s disappearance, police executed a search warrant at an apartment in the area where her phone last pinged. Three convicted felons were staying at that address. Josh Mankiewicz talks with Sophie’s father, Patrick Reeder, her aunt Kirsten Milhorn, reporter Brittany Wallman of the Miami Herald, and Sergeant Don Geiger of the Fort Lauderdale Police Department. The FLPD is offering a reward of up to $25,000 for credible information that leads to the recovery of Sophie Reeder. Anyone with information about Sophie’s disappearance is asked to call the Fort Lauderdale Police Department at 954-828-6677 or email [e-mail]. This episode was originally published on July 15, 2025.

It was 12.45 a.m. when Sophie Reader started her journey, slipping out of her house and into a syrupy Florida night. At 2.16 a.m., a.m., a security camera recorded her walking along Davy Boulevard in South Fort Lauderdale. She was wearing a short black dress, a brown fur coat, headphones, and high-top sneakers. Sophie Reader was 15 years old, and that video is the last known image of her on May 20th, 2017, the day she disappeared. Patrick Reader is her father.

Patrick, I can't imagine how difficult this has been for you. Yeah, it's like a living nightmare. A living nightmare. You've got to deal with it every day. Police would later discover where Sophie went, on her middle of the night walk. The mystery they have not solved is what happened after she arrived.

She got there after that long walk. Yeah. What does that tell you? That puts us in the vicinity to start the investigation. We call it a last scene point. It is not a place for a 15-year-old in the dark at all. That's a reporter who dug into Sophie's case. I just always think about how she had that date circled on her calendar.

A May night in 2000. 2017. Could that mark on Sophie's calendar be the key to solving her case? Sophie's aunt is on a mission to uncover the truth. If she's alive, she's against her will somewhere, and I feel like somebody needs to do something, interview the people that we know have information to find her. I'm Josh Mankewitz, and this is Missing in America, a podcast from Dateline. This episode is Marked with an X. Please listen closely, because you or someone you know may have information that could help Sophie Reader's family find the answers they're still looking for. Sophie Reader is Patrick Reader's only child. He says, long before she could talk, it was obvious she had a spark. before she could even like walk completely she would hold herself on the coffee table

and start like trying to dance to the music you know she's kind of like an entertaining kid Kirsten Milhorn is Patrick's sister she remembers when her niece was a lively little girl with a big personality she was just a sweetheart like creative and she just loved being around people like super outgoing gregarious

Sophie was about to start preschool when Patrick and her mom split up up. But they shared custody of Sophie until she was almost 12. By then, Patrick says Sophie and her mom weren't getting along. And he says that was when Sophie asked him if she could live with him full time. She was different? Definitely different. But I told her one condition was she has to go to therapy for a year weekly. And she agreed to it. Every week I drive her to therapy, get her into a therapist. In between those weekly appointments,

Sophie was giving Patrick a long list of reasons to worry. What are we talking about here? She'd burn things, like, she'd make little fires, like burn things outside, like wood, like stuff toys. And she'd, like, you know, start cutting her dolls and stuff like that. Patrick says Sophie was also cutting herself. One time she told me, hey, dad, I just can't control myself. I said, well, you've got to control your emotions, you know.

And then she goes, I can't. I go, you can if you try. After a year of therapy, Patrick says he did not argue when Sophie gave it up because that was the deal they had made. I stopped the therapy because I made a promise to her. I honored the promise. And maybe I shouldn't have, but I tried to keep my word with her to keep their trust. High school only seemed to accelerate Sophie's free fall.

Patrick says she started skipping school and hanging out with friends he thought were trouble. In January 2017, Sophie switched to an online high school, but kept spending time with those friends. Patrick says Sophie and one of them were caught shoplifting. Soon after that incident, Sophie got into a fight and threatened self-harm. So a psychiatrist prescribed medication. The medicine just made her, like, drowsy. and like she couldn't really function, you know. It sounds to me like you did do everything you could think of

and you're kind of swimming against the tide. Yeah, yeah. I didn't know what I was getting into, taking a teenage daughter with mental issues by myself. You know, it was really challenging. Kirsten watched her brother's struggle to manage his daughter, including her medications. Whatever the psychiatrist had given her,

you know, it takes a while to kick in. and of course, I don't know any teenager that wants to be medicated. When Sophie stopped taking her meds, Patrick again did not force it. Instead, he looked for ways to provide emotional support. She loved to go on car rides and listen to music. So any time at night, we would just, you know, hop in the car, turn on the music, whatever she liked and drive for like an hour or two. And it really helped her out.

She really liked it. Sophie also liked to take long walks. by herself. When she would visit my dad's house, you know, she'd walk up and down the beach for hours. It seemed like, you know, just to clear her mind. Near the end of January 2017, a couple of weeks before she turned 15,

Sophie asked Patrick's girlfriend to cut her hair. Dad, do you want to film it? Patrick had already hit record. So how are you feeling? I'm feeling good. How about you? I'm excited. It's nervous. What is that?

You're with your haircut? Yeah, I don't know. I've never had short hair before. I mean, it's pretty short now. It's going to be cute. Almost four months after that haircut came a sign Sophie might have turned a corner. On Thursday, May 18th,

she did something unexpected for Patrick and his girlfriend. She made us a big dinner, and I was like, wow, that's great. You know, it was really nice, you know? Chicken, vegetables, everything, you know, like she could think of. Maybe Sophie was finally on the other side of a very rough stretch. It can be hard to tell with a troubled teenager. The next night, Friday, May 19th, Patrick says he was getting ready to go to sleep. It was around 11.30 p.m.

And Sophie was wide awake, texting on her phone. She was pacing up and down the house from the front to the back, front to the back, front to the back, front to the back. And I said, Sophie, go to bed. You know, it's getting late. you got to go to bed. She's okay. When Patrick got up the next morning, Sophie's bedroom door was closed, and he figured she was sleeping in that Saturday, as usual. So he left to do errands and texted her while he was out.

She didn't reply. And when he got home, she was not in her room. That's when Patrick noticed Sophie had left a candle burning. She left it on, one candle. Her leaving a candle lit, I mean, that feels like something. he was going to be back in a minute. Yeah, exactly. She was not back in a minute, or in an hour, or two hours, or three. Patrick checked with his brother and father to see if they knew where she was. They did not. Patrick asked his brother to check with Sophie's mom, because sometimes Sophie took

the bus to visit her. So her being out of touch for a period of time was not immediately alarming. Not at all, no, not at all. By Sunday, they had heard back from Sophie's mom, and she did not know where Sophie was either. Now, alarms were starting to go off. Patrick says he thought he had to wait 48 hours to file a missing persons report. So he waited until Monday.

When I made the police report, the lady that took it, she's like, it's a teenage girl. They usually run away, and they'll come back in a week or two. Like, you know, it seems strange, but, I mean, I got to believe what you're saying because that's my first teenage daughter. You thought, okay, that seems plausible. Oh, yeah, yeah, absolutely. Definitely seemed plausible. She made it seem so like that's a normal thing like a lot of teenage girls do that, you know,

they go missing and then they show up at their friend's house like a week or two later. Sophie did not show up anywhere. The Fort Lauderdale police told us Sophie's name was entered into the National Missing Persons database, the day Patrick filed a missing report. Officers looked for clues online and searched the area around Sophie's home and inside it. In Sophie's bedroom, they found crumpled cash in a bag by her bed.

Police find $300 in her room, and they say to you, where did she get that money? And you have no idea. I have no idea. I had no idea how she got $300, but it was there. Sophie did not have a part-time job or a big allowance. That stash of cash seemed to suggest she had not planned to be gone for long.

Otherwise, why leave that behind? Soon, detectives found another clue, this one in plain sight, on Sophie's Wall calendar. Friday, May 19th, the last day Patrick had seen her was marked with an X. That makes you think she's planning. something for that date, even though her room does not suggest somebody who was leaving forever. Right. Yeah. You hit certain areas in an investigation where you see certain things that stand out and you look back and say, what was the connection there? That is Sergeant Don Geiger. He was assigned Sophie's cold case in 2024. Unraveling the meaning of that X would be a quest for detectives.

Sophie had two phones, and she left with one of them. Both held potentially crucial information. Soon, Sophie's computer would reveal another clue, one that stunned and worried her family. She had been visiting websites where young, attractive women can connect with rich older men, also known as Sugar Daddies. She was researching, kind of putting herself out there to see what happened.

Learning your 15-year-old daughter has been visiting sugar daddy websites is not what any parent wants to hear. For Patrick Reeder, it was hard to process. It shocked me because I had no idea, of course, you know. Now, police needed to find out if Sophie had actually found a sugar daddy online. Sergeant Don Geiger says the answer to that question appeared to be no. Once a forensics investigation was done on the laptop, there was no indication that she'd ever engaged in anything on those websites.

It was just mere signing up for me. Of course, websites were not the only way Sophie could have met someone. Her cell phone data was about to point investigators to another corner of her secret life. Police used that data to reconstruct her movement. before her disappearance. Two weeks after Sophie was reported missing, they zeroed in on her last known location. Her last ping of her cell phone

was in an area that we believe that she may have been going to maybe purchase marijuana or something like that. We don't believe that she left that location. Or her phone didn't anyway. Correct. The location he's talking about is an apartment complex

in the 1700 block of Southwest 11th Court in Fort Lauderdale. It is less than two miles from Sophie's house, but it's a world away from the waterfront homes and pools in her neighborhood. We've determined that she had frequented that area, according to some of her friends, to purchase marijuana. Police believe a man who lived in that apartment complex was selling weed to Sophie. His name is Leonard Jennings, and he is a convicted felon.

Police said Sophie's phone record showed the two people she called most frequently were her father and Leonard Jennings. They also determined Sophie had placed one of her many phone calls to Jennings at 307 a.m. on May 20th, the night she disappeared when she arrived at his address. After that call ended, her phone continued pinging from that location until 9.13 a.m. when it stopped connecting to the cellular network. Police believe she was inside Jennings' apartment at that time. When her phone shuts off, does that mean somebody just turned it off or somebody stepped on it or the battery ran down? It could have been all, we don't know.

Based on Sophie's phone records and the pings that placed her at Jennings' apartment, police considered Leonard Jennings a suspect in her disappearance. However, it was not until July 2017, more than five weeks after they had learned Sophie's last location, that police searched the apartment Jennings and two of his brothers shared with their mom. All three brothers had lengthy criminal records. Leonard Jennings had served time for offenses including aggravated assault, stalking, grand theft, and possession of cocaine. Among the items police took from the apartment, apartment were 25 cell phones, two media players, headphones, two computer towers, a journal,

a hard drive, some live ammunition, and a wig. Police could not link any of those items to Sophie Reader, and none of her belongings were found at the Jennings residence. All the Jennings brothers were interviewed. Yes. All tell the same story, we didn't see her, or we didn't see her that. We don't know her at all, or we didn't see her that night. They haven't seen her, and there's just not enough, you know, probable cause there to move forward.

Police did not arrest any of the brothers. They told us there was not sufficient evidence to continue considering Leonard Jennings, a suspect. Still, back in 2017, there was someone else police wanted to interview. They found out Jennings had called a neighbor who was a suspected trafficker. That was three days after Sophie's disappearance. There was talk that he had ties to sex trafficking and things like that, but I don't believe there was ever any convictions of any sex trafficking. Sergeant Geiger was right.

As of June 2025, Jennings' neighbor had no convictions on any sex trafficking charges. Geiger says the suspicions police had in 2017 were based on what they were hearing on the streets. It was just brought up through other persons, and you know how the streets are, right? Like when you get somebody for something, they go, oh, well, so-and-so does it too, you know, so that's where some of that came up from. The Fort Lauderdale PD told us they tried to speak with that man when they passed out missing persons flyers in their initial search for Sophie. They said he opened his door when officers knocked,

but became uncooperative when Sophie's name was mentioned and refused to continue speaking with them. In September 2018, 16 months after Sophie's disappearance, police searched Leonard Jennings apartment again, and they also searched his neighbor's apartment. By then, both men had moved out, and the units were vacant. During those searches, police up their game, using luminal to check for any traces of blood. They did not find that, and they did not find any other evidence linked to Sophie Reader. Brittany Wallman is an investigative reporter at the Miami Herald,

and she remembers the moment in 2017 when she heard Sophie Reader was missing. I heard it on TV. I was in the newsroom. Back then, Brittany worked at the Sun Sentinel in Fort Lauderdale, and she recognized Sophie's name immediately because a decade earlier, Brittany's daughter and Sophie had gone to the same preschool. And I knew she was a well-loved, well-care for a child that came from a nice neighborhood and all of that.

Brittany thinks race was a factor in how much coverage Sophie's story received. Sophie has brown skin and brown curly hair. To be a cynical journalist, she's a mixed-race child. Her mother is black, her father's white. Even as local news outlets, including her own, moved on to other stories, Brittany kept in touch with a private investigator who was helping Sophie's mom look for her daughter. He was a retired Miami-Dade police detective and believed Sophie was targeted by sex traffickers, in part because he had learned she was exploring those Sugar Daddy websites.

Originally, I just thought Sophie's missing. I didn't know that there was any nexus potentially with trafficking. Four years after Sophie went missing, Brittany and I, other reporters at the Sun Sentinel began a year-long investigation into sex trafficking in Florida. As part of that project, Brittany did a deep dive into Sophie's case. And that's when she read the affidavit for the search of Leonard Jennings' apartment back in 2017. The document listed the potential crimes being investigated, and it was a chilling list. Kidnapping, human trafficking, and murder.

I think Sophie is sort of a classic example of somebody who gets preyed upon by a trafficker. I do. I don't think it's anything about her upbringing or parenting or her status in life. She's just a teenage girl, online, you know. And attractive and lost. Yeah. Sophie's diary revealed just how lost she felt. It was among the evidence police collected from Sophie's bedroom.

Her aunt, Kirsten Milhorn, let Brittany read the diary after police returned it, and two entries stood out. She said, I'm used, unwanted, unloved, lonely. I'm like the penny you dropped under the sofa, but you don't care because hell, it's just a penny. And then another time she wrote, what to do when I'm 15? Make 10 new friends, go to the beach three times a week, get 10 sugar daddies. Okay. I'm going to say that any parent who read those words in their child's diary should be getting some intervention for that child. Should be taking that kid to therapy or at least, you know, addressing what's some significant, dangerous feelings there. But I gather nobody did read her diary.

I don't think so. I don't know that who has all the tools to parent a troubled teen daughter? I know they did try some things, but then she ended up dropping out of regular high school and was doing online school, and which, I mean, it was probably even worse for her because she's not finding good things online. I asked Patrick about what Sophie wrote in her diary. She wrote, what to do when I'm 15, make 10 new friends, go to the beach three times a week, get 10 sugar daddies. Wow, that's shocking.

I never read her diary because I didn't want to know. It was her personal information. So that's brand new information to me today. So that is shocking. Reading her diary would have tipped you off about that. It also unquestionably would have been seen by your daughter as a giant violation. yes absolutely anything like her personal i gave her respect in her her her room like some parents like no you got to go through everything right and then some are like no you got to respect their privacy

which one do you want to fall on i mean either you want to trust or you know you don't trust them so i mean like i wanted to give her a privacy but i mean if i saw red flags i'll deal with them but that stuff in a diary i didn't know and today you're kicking yourself because you didn't go through her diary no yeah yeah now i'm kicking myself and you ask Patrick's sister kirsten did read Sophie's diary when police returned it, including the entry about finding sugar daddies. Of course, that's not something you'd want your kid to say, but if you knew that information now, what can you do with it? I don't know. I just feel like you shouldn't kick yourself about stuff like that. You have no control over it, you know?

While police did not find evidence Sophie was in direct contact with anyone on a Sugar Daddy website, they did find something else in her social media that convinced Brittany Sophie had become involved in the world of commercial sex. They found a very long Instagram message between her and her best friend talking about how much to charge for different sex acts. Could that explain why Sophie had $300 in cash in a bag in her bedroom? Wherever it came from, police believed Sophie was spending some of that money on drugs,

which may have been how she met Leonard Jennings. the man whose apartment she visited on the night of her disappearance. That was who she was buying marijuana from. That's what her friends said. He was a 37-year-old felon. At that time, he had 31 felony charges, nine felony convictions, and three imprisonments, mostly for drugs, theft, assaults. I mean, okay, a habitual offender and maybe a bad guy.

But I don't hear a record of crimes against kids or anything sex-related. No, no. And so the fact that she was at his place, I mean, maybe she was meeting somebody there. Brittany interviewed several of Sophie's friends for her article on the case. She also spoke with Leonard Jennings. I talked to him on the phone. I mean, I actually took my call. I was shocked and sort of mixed between...

Denying that he even knew who Sophie Reader was, which is impossible, and saying, I don't know where she is. I mean, so it was like not even a good lie. According to the search warrant application, police filed back in 2017, Leonard Jennings, his brothers and their mother had all denied knowing, seeing, or communicating with Sophie when they were shown her photo and the missing persons flyer. The document goes on to state, quote, These lies directly contradict all of the obtained records and statements from friends regarding Sophie Reader's relationship with the Jennings family, unquote. On the night, Sophie walked to Leonard Jennings' apartment, there's a moment where she walks past a security camera on Davy Boulevard.

It is 2.16 a.m., and the area is desolate. In the video, a car drives past Sophie. And it's not just any car. It's a marked cruiser from the Broward County Sheriff's Office. I've watched that video over and over. The Sheriff's Department passes her and doesn't even slow down. Isn't that so sad? Every time I watch that, it's so sad because she looks like a child.

She had her hair up in little ponytails. I mean, we don't know. Maybe they'd just gotten a call. Maybe they've got a prisoner in the back and they're transporting him in. I mean, we don't know. But, man, you look at that piece of video and think, if you had stopped, everything could be different today. That's true. I mean, you know, you could come up with 100 excuses why that person didn't stop.

But just to be as a human being, you just wish that they're like, why is this child walking at midnight? Brittany and other reporters at the Sun Sentinel actually walked the walk Sophie took on the night of her disappearance. They wanted a sense of what she would have seen, how long it took, how far it really was. Brittany says if you head west toward Leonard Jennings' apartment, as Sophie did,

the neighborhood changes significantly. It's not a good neighborhood at all. I mean, it is not a place for a 15-year-old, you know, in the dark, at all. And that's where she was. Her phone pinged there until early the next morning. And that brings us to the question a lot of people have asked, including Brittany, about the investigation into Sophie Reader's disappearance.

Why didn't police search Leonard Jennings' apartment sooner? She had a phone on her, you know? So why did it take that long, you know? That's a question I had for Sergeant Don Geiger. Her phone pinged right near there, and she'd called Jennings a bunch of times. That doesn't get you through their door? In any missing person's case,

the last known location of the missing person is a crucial piece of information, and the missing person's cell phone number can be a key to finding that location. Fort Lauderdale Police and Patrick Reader disagree about when Patrick gave investigators Sophie's cell phone number. What they agree on is that after police determined Sophie's phone last pinged

at the apartment building where Leonard Jennings lived, police did not search his apartment until more than five weeks later in July 2017. I asked Sergeant Don Geiger about that. Why did it take so long to execute a search warrant at the Jennings apartment? Well, we didn't have enough probable cause initially based on... I mean, I don't know what your relationships are with the judges and magistrates who issue search warrants,

but I mean, her phone pinged right near there. She's a missing 15-year-old girl, and she'd called Jennings a bunch of times. That doesn't get you through their door? No. No, no, it wasn't enough because it didn't, it wasn't enough to pinpoint her at that residence at the time. Meaning they could identify the building, but not the specific apartment. Sergeant Geiger says that since 2017, technology has evolved in ways that make pinging a cell phone more precise. The technology we were getting then on the cell phone data was not as accurate as it is in 2025.

It was more of a ping of a generalized location, whereas, now it's more isolated and it could have put you almost on top of where the phone is. Today, you would know what house I was in. Back then, you would only know what neighborhood I was in. Correct. Yeah. I also asked Sergeant Geiger about that sheriff's car that drove past Sophie on Davy Boulevard, less than an hour before she reached Leonard Jennings apartment. Every time I see that, I think, man, that could have changed everything.

Yeah. No, listen, you know, we watch the same videos and we see the same things. In no way is it a justification of what happened, but I think we always, Monday morning quarterback, that area is close to the main jail. It could be a prisoner transport. You know, my heart wants to tell me if I was a patrol officer, I probably would have stopped and, you know, kind of at least question what was going on. She's 15. She's 15. Yeah, absolutely. It's one of those we kick ourselves in the butt, right?

You know, could we have done something differently? Yeah, absolutely. But we don't know what was going on at the time in the situation. At the time of Sophie's disappearance, Sergeant Geiger worked in the first. Fort Lauderdale Police Department's narcotics unit. He has a theory about what happened to Sophie at Leonard Jennings' apartment on May 20th, 2017. And it does not involve sex trafficking. I believe accidental overdose. I don't have the crystal ball to tell me.

But I feel like if it was a homicide, somebody eventually talks with nobody talking. It leads my investigative mindset to go more along the angles of like an overdose of narcotics and then, you know, a panic mode set in from the people involved. Sophie had bought weed from Jennings in the past, and police think that's why she went to see him on the day she disappeared. In 2017, Geiger says a potent synthetic drug called Flaka was popular in South Florida. It was dangerous, and its victims were often unsuspecting. People were buying what they thought was just marijuana or any other type of drug that was laced with this alpha pvp substance and that's what's what it calls the overdoses

and that's where my gut kind of leads me more towards an accidental overdose based on the history of what was going on at the time if this was an overdose what do you think happened to her body why haven't we found it you know that's the that's the million dollar question there's you know miles and miles of waterway in fort lauderdale the everglades are 20 minutes to the west We've had dive team search different canals. We've had the dive team search behind her residence. There's cadaver dogs throughout the wooded areas next to the Jenning House. And it's, you know, nothing's come up from it.

Geiger has no proof Sophie died of an overdose. He says there's also no proof. She was trafficked. When you say there was nothing there, what would you look for that you did not find? You would look for anything on those sites and things that she were on, they're being groomed, right? They're in instant message chat rooms and things like that talking to older gentlemen that are trying to feed them this life of luxury or, you know, praying on the innocence of a child to promise them, you know, money or security or love or whatever that child is

desiring. And we didn't see any of that. Have you ruled out trafficking or you just think it's less likely? We've had many tips that have been sent to us and we'll investigate every one of them. I don't believe that she was trafficked, but nothing's 100% in law enforcement. Police have not found definitive evidence that Sophie Reeder left Leonard Jennings' apartment alive on May 20th, 2017, or that she did not. Jennings still lives in Fort Lauderdale, and Sergeant Geiger says he is no longer considered a suspect in Sophie's disappearance. However, police believe he may have information about what happened to Sophie.

We have reached out to Leonard Jennings, but he has not responded to our requests for comment. I would still say he's a person of interest. Over the last two and a half years, Sophie's aunt, Kirsten Milhorn, says she has sent at least 15 leads to the Fort Lauderdale police, and she's not convinced anyone has checked them out. One lead she sent was an escort ad from Atlanta. Kirsten says she, Patrick, and other relatives all thought the woman in the act, ad more a striking resemblance to Sophie. And I immediately sent it to the police, Fort Lauderdale Police Department.

No response, nothing, not even a received acknowledgement. I asked Sergeant Geiger about that lead. The family talks about a escort ad in Atlanta in which they think the woman in there looks like Sophie. Did you guys follow that up? Yeah, we did. We've had several tips for escort ads. and every one that we've had we've followed up on

and they've all led to negative results. Do some of the photos look like Sophie? Oh, absolutely. Absolutely, they do. But you follow it up and it isn't her? Yeah. Yeah, they've been followed up on and it's not her. Fort Lauderdale police told us

every tip they've received in Sophie's case has been investigated, including the ones her family provided. In May 2025, Kirsten became the main point of context, for the family, and police say since then she has been notified following every tip they have received. Separately, Sophie's mother and Patrick have spent years trying to find their daughter, on their own, and with the help of private detectives. It has been more than eight years since they've seen Sophie, and they're learning some of the hard truths that all families of the missing

eventually run up against while working with law enforcement. You want to believe that the professionals are doing their best job possible to get an end result that you want. However, a lot of times, no, they burn through cases and they pick up another one, you know. So you become a back burner. And it's horrible. I mean, it really is. It is. And you're not the only family that I've talked to that feels exactly that way.

It's a terrible thing to have to go through when you realize this is not the most important thing for law enforcement anymore because it still is for you. Right. Exactly. Don Geiger told me Fort Lauderdale police have not forgotten Sophie's case. It remains open and active. We're not going to stop. You know, sometimes cases go cold, but that doesn't mean they get closed. We're not going to stop looking.

And that mysterious X on Sophie's calendar, marking May 19th, remains to this day a mystery to police. You know, we haven't been able to pinpoint what that connection. was or is. Reporter Brittany Wallman has interviewed several of Sophie's friends, and she believes they know more than what they have told police. One of the most frustrating things

about this story to me is that there are people who know something, and they just won't say. Brittany still has a photo of Sophie taken back in preschool at a birthday party for Britney's daughter. I think it was like her fourth birthday

wedding-themed. I had them all wear, you know, some kind of fancy dress. In the photo, the little girls are standing in a row in their fancy dresses, smiling and laughing. Sophie's dress is green with pink flowers, and her hair is in pigtails. It is the picture of innocence. Brittany says that photo is why she wanted to include Sophie's story in the Sun Sentinel's investigation into sex trafficking. I just couldn't help but think that, you know, that any picture of 10 girls, one of them could end up being a Sophie reader. At the house Patrick once shared with Sophie, time stands still in his daughter's bedroom.

Sophie's room exactly the way she left it, all the same pictures of the wall, her same painting, candles are still there. Everything is the same way that she left it. Frozen in time. Frozen in time. Not pleasant to ask this, but you think Sophie's still alive? Well, I have hope and belief that she is. Nobody ever wants to know that their kid has gone before them. I believe I can handle it either way,

but I would like the hope and the happiness I've seen her alive one day. I asked Sophie's aunt, Kirsten Milhorn, the same question. I'm more realistic maybe. It's been a long time. If she's alive, she's against her will somewhere. And I feel like somebody needs to do something, interview the people that we know have information to find her. That's what we want.

Here is how you can help. At the time of her disappearance on May 20, 2017, Sophie Reader was 15 years old with brown curly hair and brown eyes. At that time, she was 5'1 and waved. a hundred pounds. The Fort Lauderdale Police Department is offering a reward of up to $25,000 for credible information that leads to the recovery of Sophie Reader. If you have any information about her disappearance, please call the Fort Lauderdale Police Department at 954-8-28-6677. To see photos of Sophie and to learn more about other people we've covered in our Missing in America series,

go to dateline missing in America.com. There, you'll also be able to submit cases you think we should cover in the future. Thanks for listening. See you Fridays on Dateline on NBC. Missing in America is a production of Dateline and NBC News. Kate Videck is the producer of this episode. Brian Drew is the audio editor. Keani Reed is associate producer, Bradley Davis is senior producer, Paul Ryan is executive producer, and Liz Cole is senior executive producer.

From NBC News Audio, sound mixing by Rich Cutler, Bryson Barnes is head of audio production.