The Breakfast Club - Hunting 4 Answsers: Web of Mysteries: Joniah Walker

Episode Date: July 4, 2025

The Black Effect Presents... Hunting 4 Answers! In this episode of Hunting 4 Answers: When 15-year-old Joniah Walker vanished from Milwaukee in June 2022, she left behind only a chilling trail of digital footprints and unanswered questions. What began as a routine summer afternoon turned into a years-long mystery involving secrets and disturbing messages. Three years later she still remains missing. Anyone with information about Joniah's whereabouts should contact the Milwaukee Police Department at  414-933-4444 or the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children at 1-800-THE-LOST.  This is the story of Joniah Walker. YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@BreakfastClubPower1051FMSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an i Files Miami, stories of families who never stopped fighting. Listen to Cold Case Files Miami on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Maybe you've heard that Stonewall was a riot where queer people fought back against police or that it's the reason Pride is celebrated this time of year. It was one of the most liberating things that I have ever done. Legend says Marsha P. Johnson threw the very first brick. Started banging on the door of the Stonewall like one boom.

This week on Afterlives, we'll separate the truth from the myth in the life of Marsha P. Johnson. Listen to Afterlives on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. From iHeart Podcasts, before social media, before cable news, there was Alan Berg. He was the first and the original shock chuck. That scratchy, irreverent kind of way, talking to people and telling them that you're an idiot and I'm gonna hang up on you. This is Live Wire, the loud life and shocking murder of Allen Berg. And he pointed to the Denver phone book and said, well, there are probably two million suspects.

Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hunting for Answers is a production of the Black Effect Podcast Network and iHeartRadio. podcast network and iHeartRadio. Welcome to Hunting for Answers, a true crime podcast. I'm your host Hunter. And today we're talking about a case out of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. It all started in June, 2022, when a 15 year old girl was supposed to go get her work permit with her father that afternoon. supposed to go get her work permit with her father that afternoon. But when her father arrived to pick her up that day,

she was nowhere to be found. That was three years ago. What police would discover would raise terrifying questions about what really happened to this vulnerable teenager. This is the story of Janaya Walker. Janaya Walker was born on May 15th, 2007. By June, 2022, she was a 15-year-old girl living on Milwaukee's North Side.

At the time of her disappearance, she stood five feet, 3 inches tall, and weighed 130 pounds. Her mother described her as a perfect daughter. She was angelic, soft-spoken, and very intelligent. But Janiya was also struggling at the time. You see, she had been diagnosed with depression and post-traumatic stress disorder. Her therapist knew that she was having some difficulties, but even they couldn't have predicted what was about to happen.

June 23rd, 2022. It should have been an exciting day for Janaya. She was scheduled to go with her father to get her work permit for her first job at a pizzeria. But it appeared as if something was troubling Janaya that day. At 2.30 p.m., a neighbor's ring camera captured her walking away from her mother's north side Milwaukee apartment. She was alone.

At 3.27 p.m., phone records show Janaya called her therapist. Later that evening, she sent a text message to the same therapist. The message was short and to the point. She expressed running away from home. That was the last communication anyone would ever receive from Janiah Walker. Her mother also stated how she believes Janiyah was definitely groomed and lured away.

When Janiyah's father, Jonathan, arrived that day at 4 p.m. to pick up his daughter, of course we know that she was gone. He tried calling her phone. It went straight to voicemail. Her mother, Tanisha Howard, tried the same thing. Again, nothing but the voicemail. That's when they knew something was terribly wrong. Janiya had never run away before.

And despite her mental health challenges, this behavior was completely out of character for her. On June 28, five days after Janiah disappeared, her mother walked into a Milwaukee police station to update authorities with disturbing information she had discovered. Tanisha had been digging through her daughter's online activity. The teen was active on sites like Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Discord, YouTube, Gmail,

as well as some other websites for adults. However, it wasn't just the platforms that were concerning. It was who Janiyah was talking to. When Janiyah's older sister, Mackenzie Thompson, gained access to her Snapchat account, she discovered what police reports described as disturbing videos. Every single friend on Janiya's Snapchat account appeared to be older men, some located nationally, others internationally.

The majority of her messages had been deleted, but the videos dated all the way back to January 2020 and ended in June 2022, But the videos dated all the way back to January 2020 and ended in June 2022, right when Janiyah disappeared. Among all of the online connections, one name kept coming up, Zack. Police reports describe Zack as a white male with red hair and a beard from Pennsylvania. In 2012, 16-year-old Brian Herrera was gunned down in broad daylight on his way to do homework. No suspects, no witnesses, no justice.

The call was horrible. I replayed over my head all the time. For years, Brian's family kept asking questions, while a culture of silence kept the case cold. Snitches get stitches. Everybody knows it. Still, they refused to give up. I would ask my husband, do you want me to just let this go? He said, no, keep fighting. I told her I would never give up on this case.

And then, after a decade of waiting, a breakthrough. We received a phone call that was bittersweet because it's a call that we've been waiting for for a very long time. I'm Enrique Santos. This is Cold Case Files Miami, a podcast about justice, persistence and the families who never stopped fighting. Listen to Cold Case Files Miami as part of the MyCultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Janaya's mother said her daughter was very obsessed with this man. In 2018, when Janaya was just 11 years old, she had written a letter to Zach. The letter had been addressed to a location in Pennsylvania, but it was never mailed.

When Janiya disappeared, that letter had also disappeared too. Her mother believes Janiya might have taken it with her. Police eventually tracked down Zach at that Pennsylvania address. When interviewed, he admitted to speaking with Janaya on Snapchat when he was approximately 17 years old. But he denied ever meeting her or knowing where she might be.

As investigators dug deeper into Janiyah's final months, they discovered she had also been preparing for something else. Janiyah had been watching YouTube videos about doomsday prepping and living off the grid. She was researching survival skills, like how to survive in disasters. She had also recently read two books about learning the German language.

In the months before her disappearance, Janiya had also lost a significant amount of weight. Her mother had taken her to the doctor and scheduled a follow-up appointment with a specialist. But that appointment never happened because Janiah vanished first. When Janiah left that day, she didn't take any of her own clothing. Instead, she took all boys' clothing and possibly some of her brother's clothes. She may have also taken her Chrome HP laptop. The reason Janiya had stopped living with her father, Jonathan, reveals just how deep her online relationships had become. One day, he walked into his daughter's bedroom unannounced

and heard her say that she loved a man who was on her iPad. When he looked at the screen, he saw an older white male. Janaya immediately closed the iPad, and the only way to open it was with her fingerprint. Jonathan reportedly considered waiting for his daughter to fall asleep that night so he could access the device, but instead he called Janiya's mother. When police became involved, they said they would need to get a search warrant.

Jonathan decided to just let Janiyah live with her mother instead. He didn't want to risk his home being ransacked by authorities. Her father also found entries in Janiyah's diary. One page read of how she was glad that her father didn't get into her iPad that night. During his police interview, Jonathan broke down and began crying. The evidence suggests Jenaya might have known she was going to disappear. On the day she went missing,

Jenaya logged out of her Facebook mobile app. Her email records appeared to show she had deactivated her Find My Phone app on both her iPad and iPhone. She had also been turning off her location services on her phone. Jonathan had noticed that Janaya was making videos at 317 a.m. while at her mother's house. She had been using massive amounts of internet data, which her father believed was from apps she was using to communicate with people online. But perhaps most telling, Janiya's therapist had told her mother that Janiya did express

the intention to run away. Now, in the weeks following Janiyah's disappearance, her mother, Tanisha, became the target of very cruel scammers. One morning at 2.45 a.m., Tanisha woke up to a text message from an unidentified person calling from a Google number. The person claimed to know where her daughter was and said Janaya had been sexually assaulted but was still alive. The person demanded $5,000, first in Bitcoin, then through Cash App, in exchange for Janiya's location.

When Tanisha couldn't comply with the demands, the person said, stop playing with me, and threatened to stop talking. Tanisha also received calls from inmates at prisons in Richmond, Virginia, and Charlotte, North Carolina. These calls appeared to be unrelated to Janiya's case, but further added to the family's torment. Police advised Tanisha that these were likely scams,

predators trying to take advantage of a family's desperation. Milwaukee police pursued several leads in Janiya's case. Her photos were compared against a confidential database to see if she appeared on any human trafficking sites. The search yielded no results. trafficking sites. The search yielded no results. Investigators followed up on the mysterious addresses and phone numbers found in Janiya's iCloud notes. But these leads didn't produce evidence either. Police have also investigated various phone numbers that appear to be connected to Janiyah, including one associated with the name Zack that was sent to her through Snapchat.

Despite all of these efforts, Janiyah Walker remains missing. Today, more than three years after Janiah Walker vanished, her case remains open and active. In 2024, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children created an age progression image showing what Janiah might look like today as a 17-year-old. The case has all the signs of online predation. Did someone convince Janiyah to run away with promises of love or a better life? Was she trafficked? Is she still alive somewhere? Or did her trust in the wrong person lead to something darker? Janiya's disappearance has left a family shattered

and a community still searching for answers. Her mother describes Janiya as someone who was socially awkward and soft-spoken, characteristics that may have made her an easy target for online predators. Every day that passes without answers is another day of agony for her loved ones. My thoughts and prayers are with the Walker family, loved ones, and everyone who continues the search for Janiyah.

Anyone with information about Janiyah's whereabouts should contact the Milwaukee Police Department or the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. You can find their contact information in the description box below. As we close out this episode, don't forget to click the follow button to stay updated on Janiya's case and others like it.

Be sure to subscribe to Hunting for Answers on YouTube and follow us on Instagram and TikTok for more True Crime updates. And if you enjoyed this story, leave us a 5-star rating. Thank you so much for joining us on another episode. Until next time. In 2012, 16-year-old Brian Herrera was gunned down in broad daylight on his way to do homework. No suspects, no witnesses, no justice. I would ask my husband, do you want me to stop?

He was like, no, keep fighting. After nearly a decade, a breakthrough changed everything. This is Cold Case Files Miami, stories of families who never stopped fighting. Listen to Cold Case Files Miami on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Maybe you've heard that Stonewall was a riot where queer people fought back against police, or that it's the reason Pride is celebrated this time of year. It was one of the most liberating things that I have ever done.

Legend says Marsha P. Johnson threw the very first brick. It started banging on the door of the Stonewall like one boom. This week on Afterlives, we'll separate the truth from the myth in the life of Marsha P. Johnson. Listen to Afterlives on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. From iHeart Podcasts, before social media, before cable news, there was Alan Berg. He was the first and the original shock chuck.

That scratchy, irreverent kind of way of talking to people and telling them that you're an idiot and I'm gonna hang up on you. This is Live Wire, the loud life and shocking murder of Alan Berg. And he pointed to the Denver phone book and said, well, there are probably two million suspects. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an iHeart Podcast.