Lenoria Jones
At approximately 9:40 AM on the morning of 20 July 1995, 45-year-old Berlean Williams called 911. In a rather-unaffected voice, she told the dispatcher that her niece and adopted daughter, 3-year-old Lenoria Jones, was missing, having disappeared from a Target in the Hilltop neighborhood of Tacoma, Washington…
At approximately 9:40 AM on the morning of Thursday, July 20th, 1995, 45-year-old Berlean Williams called 911. In a rather-unaffected voice, she told the dispatcher that her niece and adopted daughter, 3-year-old Lenoria Jones, was missing. Per a partial transcript of the audio:
The 911 operator started the conversation.
"911, police, fire or medical aid?"
Berlean responded:
"Yes, I'm calling to see... how long is it... I mean, I just... I just missed my daughter... She's 3 years old and I... I'm here in the grocery store... I was walking around trying to find her, but I haven't seen her yet."
"OK, you lost your daughter?"
"Yes."
"What grocery store, ma'am?"
"Huh? I been in Target."
"So, you're at Target and not Top Foods?"
"No, I'm not at Top Foods, I'm at Target right now."
"OK, well, you said 'grocery store,' that's why I want to verify. How long ago did you last see her?"
"I think just a few minutes."
"Well, how long... ma'am?"
"About... about... about 15... 10 or 15 minutes."
"OK, inside Target?"
"Yes."
A large contingent of police and volunteer searchers would arrive at the location - a Target located in the Hilltop neighborhood of Tacoma - and fail to locate any trace of the missing girl, despite searching the surrounding area for several hours that fateful Thursday. It was as if a hole had opened up in the world itself and swallowed her whole. She was just... gone.
As you'd expect, authorities would begin to question the woman who'd reported the little girl missing - her great-aunt, Berlean Williams. That would only create more questions than answers and lead to one of the most unusual cases in Pacific Northwest history... with each step forward seeming to result in two steps back, leaving us with a frustrating knot that remains untangled to this day.
This is the story of Lenoria Jones.
Lenoria Eleise Anne Jones was born on January 3rd, 1992 in Spokane, Washington, into a seemingly-hopeless situation.
Born with cocaine in her system, Lenoria would end up diagnosed with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder very young in life. While ADHD isn't usually diagnosed until later in childhood - closer to seven years old or so - children born with cocaine in their system are sometimes diagnosed far earlier. For that reason, Lenoria would be medicated throughout her short life, something we'll expand upon later in the episode.
From birth, Lenoria didn't seem to have much of a relationship with either of her parents. Her father's identity was (and is still) not known - at least, not publicly. And while Lenoria knew her mother - Diedre Jones - the two weren't incredibly close and never lived together.
According to the Washington Department of Social and Health Services, which oversaw the state's child and family services, Lenoria's mother was a cocaine addict. Her adoptive mother would later describe Lenoria as a "crack baby," a colloquial term that was commonly used at the time.
In the months before giving birth, Lenoria's other Diedre had been facing multiple charges for transporting cocaine and was looking at spending years in jail at the time she gave birth. After doing so, Diedre was given an expedited sentence of one year in jail and eighteen months of community supervision; perhaps in the hopes that she would turn her life around and become a maternal figure for Lenoria. However, shortly after Lenoria's birth, Diedre would relinquish parental rights, although it's unclear if this was her decision or a decision forced upon her by the state's child and family services.
Diedre Jones would end up skipping out on her community supervision and relocating from Spokane to Arkansas, where she would live for at least the next few years.
Meanwhile, Lenoria - having been taken from her mother after birth - would end up becoming a ward of the state. For the next couple of years, she would bounce around the foster system, and stay with an assortment of relatives, including two aunts, two great-aunts, and her maternal grandparents.
Eventually, though, she would find a place that she could call 'home.'
In the summer of 1994, Lenoria moved in with her auntie, Berlean Williams, whose brother's daughter was Lenoria's mother... making Berlean Lenoria's great-aunt, technically speaking.
Berlean had grown up in a religious household in Mississippi but ended up moving to Washington in her early adulthood, where she lived with her brother and wife. There, in Spokane, she briefly stayed with her brother and sister-in-law, Frank and Annie Jones, who were the parents of Lenoria's mother, Diedre. Eventually, though, Berlean would marry and move out on her own, having three daughters in quick succession (Natasha, Narissa, and Ulisa Johnson). Later, Berlean would divorce and relocate to the western side of the state, to Tacoma, where she married again and gave birth to her fourth child and only son, Maurice Williams.
Having been a Sunday school teacher at the Maranatha Church of God in Christ, Berlean ended up finding her calling in taking care of children. According to her brother, Frank Jones, Berlean was always great at taking care of children and became a huge help to him and his wife when she stayed with them. Per an interview in the News Tribune years later:
"... Berlean liked to deal with the kids. Berlean was always patient with the little kids. If somebody had a new baby, she would watch them. She would always take care of the little kids."
At around the time that Lenoria Jones was born in 1992, Berlean was living in Tacoma; in particular, in the neighborhood known as Hilltop, an area well-known among residents of western Washington. A historically-black neighborhood, Hilltop has become very racially diverse over the last few decades but was once known for its excessive amount of gang violence. The Hilltop Crips - one of the most violent gangs in North America throughout the 1980s - patrolled the streets and dealt drugs throughout Hilltop and the surrounding area, giving Hilltop the notorious reputation that now precedes it. This ultimately culminated in an infamous shootout with Army Rangers in 1989 - with hundreds of rounds being fired, but no one seriously injured or killed - but led to a major crackdown.
Pierce County and the state of Washington began taking a closer look at Hilltop and clamping down on not only the Crips, but the other gangs that operated in the region, as well as less-organized crime rings and criminals. An increased police presence throughout Hilltop began to turn back the rising tide of gangs and drugs, but this was a slow and painful process that would take years.
During this time, Berlean lived in Hilltop, along the 1900 block of South Sheridan Avenue. There, she not only lived with her family - her three daughters, who were in their later teen years, and her son, who was approaching ten - but also operated a day-care center.
In July of 1994, Lenoria would move in with her great-aunt Berlean, who opened up her home to her niece's daughter and initiated custody proceedings. For the foreseeable future, Berlean would act as a mother to Lenoria, who was continuing to grow into her personality as a very active child.
In March of 1995, notices placed in The Spokesman-Review requested that unknown paternal figures show up at a hearing in a Spokane court that month, during which, a decision would be made on the termination of their parental rights. This petition to remove Lenoria's paternal rights had originally been filed back in January of 1992, just days after Lenoria had been born and similarly removed from the care of her mother.
A decision would be made around this time, giving Berlean full custody of Lenoria. However, as reported by The News Tribune, the papers proclaiming Berlean as Lenoria's legal permanent guardian hadn't even arrived in the mail when tragedy struck.
At 9:42 AM on the morning of Thursday, July 20th, 1995, Berlean called 911 to let them know that Lenoria had disappeared that morning while they visited a Target in the 3300 block of S. 23rd Street, approximately two miles away from their home.
Berlean told the 911 dispatcher and officers that arrived a short time later that the two had been inside Target shopping, and then while the two were looking at toys, Lenoria somehow got lost. The original belief was that Lenoria - a hyperactive child - had supposedly wandered off. A subsequent search by police of the Target and surrounding area would fail to come up with any trace of the girl, who had her hair braided at the time and had disappeared while wearing a black Barney t-shirt and turquoise pants.
Thinking that they might be able to find some evidence of the girl's whereabouts - or at least the direction she had gone - police then decided to check out the Target's surveillance tapes. While reviewing this footage, they would discover that contrary to what they had been told, Berlean had entered the store alone... without Lenoria anywhere to be found. Not only had Lenoria not been inside the store with her aunt, but it seemed like Berlean had entered the store by herself.
In all of the footage available to be reviewed, Lenoria was nowhere to be found.
At this point, suspicious that something untoward might have happened, police officers would ask to question Berlean about her niece's whereabouts.
During this round of questioning, which went on for several hours, Berlean would give conflicting statements to police; at one point, telling investigators that "maybe" Lenoria hadn't been with her when she went into the store.
Jim Mattheis, the spokesman for the Tacoma Police Department, would later tell reporters (as reported by the Associated Press):
"She was confronted with the fact that the video showed she (Lenoria) wasn't with her at the store. Her statement was, 'Well, maybe she wasn't with me.'"
Later, as reported by the News Tribune, Mattheis would continue:
"That's the kind of sketchy information we're getting. We've been unable to substantiate her story... Her story has continuously changed. These are really suspicious circumstances... It could be that the girl wandered off, but there's also a good possibility she met with foul play."
That day, search-and-rescue teams would arrive near the location Lenoria had been reported missing, using the parking lot of Bellarmine Prep - a private Catholic school across the street from Target - as a staging ground for their rescue vehicles. At the same time, police would search Berlean's home in Hilltop, where they were unable to find anything incriminating - or anything that pointed to Lenoria's current whereabouts.
Meanwhile, police tried to get a better sense of Berlean and Lenoria's timeline, which included multiple stops that morning, as reported by the News Tribune:
- After leaving home at approximately 8:00 AM, the two had gone to a car wash at South 12th Street and South Sprague Avenue
- Then made a stop at a convenience store at Sixth Avenue and Alder Street
- Before moving on to Target, the two had then dropped by a Top Foods grocery store in the area
- And then, finally, arriving at Target sometime after 9:00 AM
As police questioned Berlean, other officers from the Tacoma Police Department questioned her daughters, who lived in the home with her and Lenoria. The two that were home that morning were unable to provide much in the way of information, with one telling police that she saw Lenoria asleep at around 6:30 that morning, and another saying that Berlean had left home with Lenoria about an hour-and-a-half later (approximately 8:00 AM).
However, police would learn from their conversations with Berlean's daughters that she had called one of them that morning at approximately 8:47 AM; during this conversation, she had reported Lenoria missing. This was about an hour before she had called 911 to let authorities know that the three-year-old was nowhere to be found... and also before she had arrived at Target. It's unknown if the facts of the case had simply been confused or misreported, but this outlier bit of information would cause a lot of doubt to blossom in the weeks to come... as authorities continued their avid search for Lenoria.
Approximately 100 people participated in the search-and-rescue efforts that afternoon, canvassing the area around the Target store where Lenoria had been reported missing. However, it seemed like wherever the child had gotten to or been taken, there was not a single trace of her to be found anywhere.
The following day - July 21st, 1995 - the search for missing three-year-old Lenoria Jones continued, and police continued to circle her aunt, Berlean Williams, who was the last known person to have seen her.
That Friday, Berlean was called in again for questioning from roughly 11:00 AM to 9:00 PM. During this round of questioning, it seems like Berlean's story shifted yet again, confusing and frustrating police. Tacoma Police Spokesman Jim Mattheis spoke to reporters with the News Tribune that evening and claimed that Berlean had told investigators that she supposedly knew where Lenoria was but wasn't able to tell them. Per Mattheis:
"She gets to a point, she wants to tell us, and then she stops. We need something else to go on, we need to find someone who saw her leave the house... We're waiting for her to come up with the truth."
Earlier that day, authorities with the Department of Social & Health Services had suspended the license for Berlean's day-care center, "God's Wonderful World of Colors," which - if you recall - she operated out of her home. She had previously operated the day-care out of another address in the same area, also located along Sheridan Avenue, but had relocated it to her current residence earlier that year (March 1995).
Berlean's day-care center was only licensed to take care of as many as six children at a time but had been inspected more than four times over a roughly twelve-year span. In almost all of those inspections, the only deficiencies were pretty regular for day-care centers; things like cluttered messed, lack of emergency evacuation procedures, improper storage of medicine... things like that, which were usually corrected.
It was reported that Berlean's day-care had only received one complaint in the past, which had come from a mother whose daughter had been left in the care of Berlean's assistant for a time, but that was it. Were it not for this single complaint, Berlean and her day-care had a virtually-spotless record... she didn't even have any kind of criminal record up to this point. However, because of Lenoria's disappearance and the odd circumstances surrounding it, authorities felt compelled to act quickly, and Berlean's day-care license would remain suspended for the foreseeable future.
After failing to rouse any more leads that Friday, police would call off their search of the location around the shopping center where Lenoria had been reported missing. Frustrated, Tacoma Police spokesman Jim Mattheis would tell reporters:
"Does mom have the kid and is the aunt covering for her? Is she dead? We don't know if (Berlean) is afraid of somebody or if the child died accidentally and she panicked. We just don't know. We've exhausted all of our leads.
"It's frustrating for the detectives - there's a 3-year-old child that's still out there, and may or may not be alive."
Police would continue to work the case throughout the weekend, but were unable to come up with any trace of the still-missing three-year-old.
On Sunday evening - July 23rd, 1995 - Lenoria's family would speak to the public for the first time, hosting a small press conference in front of Berlean's Hilltop home. Berlean herself would remain in the background throughout, letting other family members take point and speak for her and Lenoria's family.
During this press conference, these family members - namely, Berlean's daughters - would defend Berlean, telling the press that her inconsistent statements were due to her being overly worried about her niece. They also explained that during her bouts of questioning with investigators, she had been extremely nervous; after all, a black woman having an adversarial relationship with Tacoma police wasn't unheard of at the time. The predominantly-black community of Hilltop had a tumultuous relationship with police, to say the least, and matters weren't helped by the fact that police had begun grilling Berlean at the onset of their investigation.
Berlean's family members would also publicly claim that Lenoria had been abducted, with one of her daughters, Narissa Johnson, telling reporters:
"'Where is she?' We continue to ask each other these questions ourselves and to each other and to God. Only God knows where Lenoria is."
Johnson claimed that Lenoria had been with her mother when the two got to Target but must have gotten lost outside of the store... presumably, having run off and gone missing somewhere in the parking lot. She then continued, stating:
"Lenoria asked, 'Can I have a toy?' While walking, Mom responded, 'Once we finish looking for me a bathing suit, we can go look for a toy."
Berlean then reportedly heard Lenoria say "OK," and assumed that the little girl continued to walk behind her as she walked into Target. However, during shopping, Berlean found out that she wasn't. Per her daughter at the press conference:
"After we leave the bathing suits we can go look for a toy, huh, Lenoria... This time there was no response from Lenoria."
At this point, according to Narissa Johnson, Berlean then began looking for her missing niece, calling family members a few minutes later, followed by a call to 911 a short time after that.
During this press conference, Berlean volunteered to be interviewed by police yet again - which would be the third time in total - and police officials later stated that not only were they planning on doing so, they were going to interview and re-interview other members of her family. These same family members ended their press conference by pleading with the public to help them find Lenoria, who had now been missing for more than three days.
On Monday evening - July 24th - Berlean Williams was interviewed for the third time by detectives with the Tacoma Police Department, with Jim Mattheis - their spokesman - saying that he hoped this interview would be more constructive. Per the Tri-City Herald:
"We've had about three different versions of stories, from a robbery to kidnapping to 'I've lost the child at Target.' You know some place there's the truth and the sad part is we've still got a 3-year-old child out there someplace."
The next day, Mattheis would offer up a cynical view of the prior night's interview, telling reporters with The Olympian:
"It gets worse as time goes on."
Mattheis hinted at Berlean's statements continuing to contradict prior statements she had given but did admit that the 5.5-hour interview yielded some new information, claiming:
"... it's basically just a lead, not a revelation."
Per an account in the News Tribune later that week, it's believed that this lead might have been related to a new scenario Berlean presented to them, in which two men had accosted her in the alleyway behind her home and abducted Lenoria. However, it's unknown if this scenario had any truth to it, or if Berlean had merely presented it as a theoretical after hours of harsh questioning.
The following evening - Tuesday, July 25th - Berlean would speak out publicly for the first time, having had family members speak for her in the days prior. Speaking to reporters outside of her pastor's home, Berlean would state:
"I didn't have anything to do with Lenoria's disappearance. I stand just like any other mother, missing my child."
Berlean reiterated that her multiple contradicting statements came about because of her nervousness in dealing with police, which she described as being incredibly stressful, on top of not knowing where Lenoria was... which she claimed was only compounded by police immediately viewing her as a suspect in the girl's disappearance.
Berlean told reporters that police should be looking harder to find Lenoria, instead of spending so much time focusing on her.
"Let's not neglect the fact Lenoria is still out there somewhere... You think there's some secret I'm hiding. But that doesn't make sense. I've lost everything."
The following day - Wednesday, July 26th - Berlean was called in to testify in Pierce County Juvenile Court, having been subpoenaed by the Department of Social & Health Services, who had suspended her day-care license the week prior. While the approximately three-hour-long hearing was closed to the public, state officials made it clear that they wanted to get Berlean under oath so they could ask her questions about Lenoria. This hearing would challenge Berlean's custody of Lenoria, should she be found. If you recall, Berlean had only been granted permanent custody of the girl months prior.
While a gag order prevented anyone involved in the case from speaking publicly about specifics, Kathy Spears, the spokeswoman for the state's DSHS, would tell reporters with the News Tribune:
"There's been more than one person interested in custody."
This statement leads one to think that other family members of Lenoria were in the process of appealing and/or petitioning for custody themselves. Might they have disapproved of Berlean being the girl's guardian, and resorted to desperate measures to take custody of the girl? This was a question that investigators had to ask themselves as they continued to try and make sense of this baffling disappearance.
A major theory that police and the press bandied about in the early days of this case was the belief that a family member might have abducted Lenoria. After all, Berlean's custody of the girl was contested at the time of her disappearance, and it was theorized by some that a disgruntled family member may have taken matters into their own hands.
Early on, police attempted to track down Lenoria's biological mother, who they were told lived in Texas. Later, it was reported that she actually lived in Arkansas, and investigators had reached out to police in Star City, about 70 miles south of Little Rock, to check in with her.
Following a year spent in jail after Lenoria's birth, her mother Diedre Jones had then gone on to serve out 18 months of community supervision in the Spokane region. However, during this time, Diedre had disappeared and failed to check in with the proper authorities, resulting in a warrant for her arrest in Washington. She had eventually ended up in the region of Star City, Arkansas, where she was living at the time of Lenoria's disappearance.
Police in the region checked in with her and failed to find any trace of Lenoria in her home. Members of the FBI would conduct interviews with Diedre and her relatives and friends in the area and believed that she didn't have anything to do with Lenoria's disappearance. Based on the available evidence, these agents also didn't think that the girl's disappearance had anything to do with a custody dispute.
Concerning this belief - that Lenoria hadn't been taken as part of a custody dispute - Jim Mattheis, the spokesman for Tacoma police, would tell the News Tribune:
"It decreases the possibilities. We have less hope left that she is alive."
In the months to come, family members on every side of the aisle - Berlean and her family in Tacoma, her brother and sister-in-law in Spokane, and even Lenoria's mother's family in Arkansas - would accuse the others of conspiring to abduct or disappear her. This even led to a lawsuit filed by Lenoria's maternal grandparents against Berlean, which hoped to uncover new information about the disappearance. However, this avenue seems to have been a total dead end for investigators, who were unable to find any new information amidst the family infighting. According to them, there was no proof that any family member had abducted Lenoria and was hiding her from the others.
The day after appearing in juvenile court for the first time, Berlean Williams was called back again to give testimony. Because of the gag order placed on these hearings, nobody was allowed to talk specifics, but certain government officials made it clear that they wanted to get Berlean under oath to obtain information about Lenoria's disappearance but also perhaps gather evidence of perjury or obstruction of justice - some kind of secondary charge that could possibly compel Berlean to tell them what they wanted to hear.
Larry Pederson, an area manager for DSHS, said to reporters:
"We are more worried every day that goes by... The community's patience is growing a little thin. We're using all the tools at our disposal to bring this thing to an end."
At around the same time, police officials began to lose hope in their search for Lenoria, with Tacoma police spokesman Jim Mattheis telling reporters with the News Tribune:
"The more time that goes by, the more concerned we become about her. Our hope that we will find (the missing girl) is dwindling."
Mattheis and other police representatives began to publicly speculate that Lenoria had possibly overdosed on the drugs used to treat her ADHD; namely, desipramine, which was sold as Norpramin at the time. This was a tricyclic antidepressant used primarily to treat the symptoms of ADHD, as well as - in limited effectiveness - certain cases of cocaine dependence (which may have been why it was chosen to treat Lenoria's ADHD, in particular). In other cases, Norpramin had been used to treat potential behavioral issues, but I'm not sure if Lenoria had those.
Norpramin tends to be less sedative than other similar ADHD drugs, but is incredibly toxic if taken in excess, and can lead to symptoms such as drowsiness, abnormal heart rate, heart failure... even death if not treated immediately. For that reason, Norpramin isn't usually recommended for children younger than 18 years old, as the risk of serious side effects or an overdose are significantly higher in those with a weakened heart (which again, I'm not sure if Lenoria had, but considering she was born with cocaine in her system, we can assume as a possibility).
When I started researching this drug online, I discovered that once started on this drug, it should only be stopped after consulting a doctor. Those on Norpramin may experience withdrawal-like symptoms if they stop taking it cold turkey, and it may be a drug that requires weaning. This may or may not be relevant, but I thought it was worth mentioning.
According to reports, Lenoria had only been on this drug for a few days at the time of her disappearance, having been prescribed it just a week or so before going missing.
While police began publicly speculating that Lenoria had overdosed on her medication, they also seemed to couch this theory by saying that it was no more credible than their other leads, which ranged from a potential abduction at Target to a potential kidnapping elsewhere, possibly at Berlean's home - which she had apparently alluded to during one of her interviews with police.
As the one-week mark of Lenoria's disappearance came and went, little had been learned in that span by Tacoma Police, who had six detectives working the case. Soon, the passing days would begin to turn into weeks, and no sign of the missing girl had been found... not even a strong hint as to her whereabouts following the morning of July 20th, 1995.
Another theory that has lingered in this case from the very beginning - propagated mostly by police officials talking about it in the press - is that something happened to Lenoria that her great-aunt was aware of.
If you recall, this seemed to start from the very day of Lenoria's disappearance... the first hour, in fact. While I haven't heard the audio for myself, police officials insist that Berlean William's 911 phone call to reporting Lenoria missing seemed almost apathetic. As recounted by Tacoma investigator, Sergeant Jim Young:
"You're listening to a mother who's lost her 3-year-old, but there's no urgency in her voice, and she sounds somewhat letharic. You might think a mother who's missing her daughter would be somewhat excitable."
Other than Berlean's tone - which, again, we can only take Tacoma PD's word on - investigators also claim that the content of the call had some major inconsistencies. For example, the 911 call was made approximately 30 minutes after Berlean had arrived at Target, at approximately 9:42 AM. During the call, she seemed not to know how long Lenoria had been missing, telling the operator "I think just a few minutes" at one point, and then "about 15... 10 or 15 minutes" just a moment later.
However, I mention this because, if you recall, about an hour before calling 911, Berlean had made a call to her family at home, letting them know that Lenoria was missing. When that call had been made - at 8:47 AM - Berlean had been at Top Foods, a nearby grocery store. She wouldn't arrive at Target for approximately 20 minutes. If Lenoria had gone missing in another location, it would have made the search for her during the first 36 hours of her disappearance entirely pointless.
These details may have been confused or conflated in the various retellings of this story - through numerous newspapers and TV broadcasts - but point to a rather-complicated story of either half-truths or forgotten facts. Sometimes it's hard to tell which.
While investigators spent the first few months of the case being pretty critical of Berlean Williams, by the end of 1995, they had completely thrown caution to the wind. That was when police officials began openly naming Berlean a suspect in the disappearance of her niece. As stated by Detective Larry Ihlen, as reported by the Associated Press:
"I'd have to say she would be considered a suspect at this point. There's no other explanation. She's either the suspect or she's covering for someone in the family."
Berlean's attorney Jack Hill would offer up a rebuttal to this comment, saying that police:
"... can point to not one thing, nothing, anywhere, of any kind, to show she had motivation to bring harm to this child."
And to that, I have to agree. From an outsider's perspective - who is familiar with the area and the basic notes of the story, but is only doing a deep dive decades later - it seems like there was no motive whatsoever for Berlean to intentionally cause harm to Lenoria. There had been no documented signs of any abuse, no one had ever made a single mention of Lenoria being mistreated or unloved in Berlean's home, and by all indications, the girl had assimilated into her adopted family pretty seamlessly. Even if she didn't want to take care of her anymore, there were other family members vying for custody of Lenoria.
However... what if Lenoria had died accidentally?
One of the prevailing theories in this story is that Lenoria overdosed on Norpramin, the antidepressant that she'd been prescribed in the weeks before her disappearance to treat her ADHD.
Shortly after learning about Lenoria's disappearance on July 20th, 1995, police went to the Mary Bridge Children's Hospital in Tacoma and consulted with health care professionals there about the likelihood of a child overdosing on the drug. In this case, they simply wanted to learn if that was possible in this case, with a child so young not only being diagnosed with ADHD but given medication to treat it.
As reported by The News Tribune, police would learn that this was incredibly possible, especially in the first few days of using this drug, when most of the side effects or harmful reactions were likely to occur. And that was true for even small doses, as the smallest dose of Norpramin was 10 milligrams, and as little as 50 milligrams (five pills) would cause a three-year-old to react.
According to Terri Bonck, the then-pharmacy specialist at Mary Bridge, 150 milligrams (15 pills) would put a child of Lenoria's size into "serious trouble," and 30 pills (300 milligrams) would likely lead to death without immediate medical intervention. And this is all assuming the relative health of the person at the center of the hypothetical... a three-year-old that had been born with cocaine in her system, and likely had some physical and behavioral issues, as a result, would be much more susceptible and possibly fare worse with less.
According to Terri Bonck, who was quoted in the August 3rd issue of the News Tribune:
"Signs of an overdose would become clear in about two hours, Bonck said, and death would occur within six."
Nowadays, usage of Norpramin is usually restricted to adolescents and older; rarely given to anyone younger than twelve years old, and seldom to someone as young as three. Adding to this, Lenoria was pretty normal in size at the time of her disappearance and only weighed approximately 40 pounds at the time. As we all know, being smaller in size or stature can cause more serious reactions to certain drugs or substances, because the body just metabolizes them differently.
In the absence of any other alternative, I find it possible that Lenoria had perhaps taken too much Norpramin... maybe not even an unusual dosage, but one that was too much for her age and size. If she had, this might have resulted in her developing symptoms like Serotonin syndrome, which is usually caused by starting new meds or increasing doses of preexisting meds. Since Norpramin can cause drowsiness, it was likely given to Lenoria at night, right before bedtime, and the effect might not have been felt until hours later.
Studies published on Norpramin later on indicated that it had a link to respiratory failure, but it was unlikely at the time that Lenoria's family knew that since the medication had just been prescribed by a doctor a short time beforehand.
According to police, who publicly floated this idea of an accidental overdose numerous times during their investigation, alleged that Lenoria had perhaps overdosed on her new ADHD medication, which then led to Berlean attempting to cover up the death to not only protect herself and her family but her livelihood (which was running a day-care center out of her home). Investigators believed that this explained away the one-hour gap in time between when Berlean supposedly first noticed Lenoria was missing (approximately 8:45 AM) and when she contacted police (about an hour later, at 9:45-ish).
Speaking to the News Tribune in July of 2000, Detective Larry Ihlen would speculate:
"The medication could have caused an accidental death. I have a strong feeling the family knows more than they are saying, and not just the aunt."
Police would continue to look into the disappearance of Lenoria Jones whenever possible, and would forward any information obtained about the case to the FBI, hoping that sharing her details through a nationwide database would help find her, should she be found outside of the local area.
Yet within two weeks of Tacoma police beginning their quest to find Lenoria, the number of investigators working on the case would whittle down from 6 to 4. Eventually, a single detective would end up monitoring the case on a part-time basis, with other cases taking up a larger presence in their workdays.
For her part, Lenoria's guardian Berlean Williams would ask through her attorney, Jack Hill, for the court transcripts of her multiple testimonies to be released. She contended that these testimonies would explain how and/or why her multiple explanations of Lenoria's disappearance had come to be, and why she was perceived to be so difficult or aloof by police. As reported by The News Tribune, her lawyer Jack Hill explained:
"It's not so much of a bombshell as it is an explanation of how the various versions came to be. It would be helpful for the public to know."
Berlean and her lawyer wanted to publicly clear the air because since the story had broken, Berlean had become a punching bag for the local media and had been taken to task by reporters looking for a scoop in what had become one of the region's most high-profile stories, garnering front-page headlines on local newspapers and regular TV coverage on daily news broadcasts. As a result, Berlean's life had completely flipped upside down, and she had even started to receive death threats from residents who believed her responsible for Lenoria's disappearance.
In the same News Tribune article I quoted from a moment ago - dated August 4th, 1995 - Berlean's lawyer Jack Hill stated about the interrogations Berlean had gone through when she gave the reportedly-contradictory statements to police:
"They interviewed her using interrogation techniques that put her in fear. She became very afraid. She said things she should not have said. She said them out of fear."
Hill then claimed that police had continued to pressure Berlean - not only privately, but publicly, through the press - because they had no other strong leads. And instead of developing other existing leads, he claimed they decided to instead double down and vilify Berlean.
Nearly two months after Lenoria's disappearance - in September of 1995 - multiple outlets reported that state social workers had expressed hesitancy about Berlean gaining custody of Lenoria earlier that year, citing concerns that she:
"... would not have the ability to work with a special needs child - i.e. read and apply knowledge, work with schools and just plain understand what this child's needs are."
The author of the same report claimed that Williams had made poor judgments in the past, and expressed concerns about her intelligence, claiming that she
"... doesn't understand (the) needs of children..."
Berlean would attempt to re-open her day-care center, calling DSHS to get her business license out of its suspended status. However, at the time, she had been told by Carol Clark, the local area supervisor, that:
"This home cannot reopen until issues with the 3-year-old are resolved."
That same month, during another dependency hearing, state officials urged the court to jail Berlean, believing that she hadn't been totally forthcoming about information in Lenoria's disappearance. While they weren't able to jail her, necessarily, they were able to confine her to her home on September 21st, literally holding her under house arrest with the belief that she hadn't told the full truth about her missing niece. She would be held under house arrest until January 19th, 1996, approximately four entire months - during which time, no charges were filed against her.
During that span - while Berlean was confined to her home - her lawyer, Jack Hill, would speak to the press. He claimed that the custody disputes regarding Lenoria had been much more bitter than police had led the public to believe, with Berlean attempting to adopt the girl as were an aunt that lived in Arkansas and her maternal grandparents from Spokane. And according to Hill, this dispute had led to certain comments being:
"... communicated to Berlean to the effect that if we can't have Lenoria, nobody can; to the effect of threatening Berlean Williams and her children with violent force, including firearms."
Per the News Tribune, at least one of the family members vying for custody of Lenoria had received multiple previous allegations of "criminal abuse," while another had been previously convicted for drug possession.
In his statements to the press, Hill also claimed that just before Lenoria's disappearance, family members from the Spokane region had come to visit Lenoria; which he said gave them a chance to learn about Lenoria's patterns and habits, etc. As stated by Hill himself:
"In short, there is everything here that points to a family abduction."
Jack Hill also claimed that the treatment of Berlean by police - and by extension, the press - had led to Berlean suffering from "stress-induced psychosis," which triggered her severe depression and caused her to disassociate. This, he claimed, is what had originally led to her contradictory statements during her police interviews. In fact, Hill stated that Berlean's first conversation with police had resulted in her:
"... losing control of her mind from the stress of losing control of this girl... The symptoms of this would be severe short-term memory loss... a profound inability to communicate effectively or consistently, and would also cause her to appear disassociative or uncooperative or withdrawn and extremely fearful."
In this next section, I'm going to be getting a little opinionated. Since I know that upsets some of you, I'm giving you a heads up here to just skip ahead a few minutes. However, I'd recommend you don't.
Having grown up in and spent most of my formative years in Washington state, I feel like I can say something pretty comfortably... it's a pretty white state. As a white guy from a white family, I feel like I can acknowledge that.
While I did appreciate growing up in Washington - it's a beautiful place with a population that is far more open-minded and accepting of other cultures than most other places I've lived in - I do have to admit that large portions of Washington are lived in and governed by white people. That's just a fact. While there are many, many minority populations, up until rather recently, most of the state's government officials were white (many of them men).
Don't worry, I'm not going to get political in this episode... that's not my intent with this. I know some of you start seething when I mention the word 'government.' However, it's hard for me to talk about this case and not mention the possibility of racial bias, which possibly played a huge role in how this story unfolded and was reported upon.
From the beginning of this case - quite literally, from the original 911 call to police arriving at the scene - officers seem to have circled in on Berlean as their suspect. In a way, I do understand that line of thinking; as I've said many times before on this podcast, most disappearances or murders are perpetrated by those closest to the victim (spouses, siblings, parents, coworkers, etc.). But at the same time, I also have a problem with this response, because it seems like a higher priority was placed on grilling Berlean for several hours at a time when - for all police knew - she was a woman struggling to understand what had happened to her niece (who was, for all intents and purposes, her adopted daughter).
As a newfound parent myself, I cannot even imagine the type of existential terror I would be in if my daughter were to disappear like that. I can only guess at my emotional and physical response in such an instance, but I bet I wouldn't be able to help out police much in the way of cogent, coherent answers, that's for sure... and I'm just a boring white guy with social anxiety.
If you recall back to the beginning of the episode, when I spoke about the cleanup of Hilltop... well, that cleanup was overseen primarily by law enforcement, who targeted gangs and other members of the predominantly black community of Hilltop in Tacoma. This was the same community that Berlean called home, where she had lived for the better part of a decade.
When we keep these details in mind, it makes it easier to understand why Berlean might not have trusted the police... especially when these same officers openly suspected her of wrongdoing from the jump. These were likely the same officers that she had seen patrolling her neighborhood and harassing neighbors with the same skin color as her, and she then had to entrust them to look for Lenoria... only to be made into the prime suspect within minutes of their arrival.
From there, the press got most of their details about Berlean Williams and her multiple police interviews from the police themselves. These leaked details seemed to actively feed into the narrative that she was "aloof" and/or trying to hide something, which police had no evidence of at the time. Rather, this entire belief was based on Berlean's seemingly-contradictory statements made to them during multiple-hour police interviews and her 'general vibe,' as it seemed to them. After all, there was no proof that she had actually done anything wrong, other than lose track of her adopted child for a bit.
It's also worth pointing out that this narrative - that Berlean was contradictory and "aloof" - was laundered through the press by the police, who controlled the narrative by making constant daily statements every day following Lenoria's disappearance. Berlean only spoke to the public a couple of times - once through her family and once through her lawyer - but was forbidden from revealing details about her dependency hearings because of the gag order placed on her and the other participants.
During her statements made to the public, Berlean admitted to being a parent... she claimed that she had been nervous, stressed out, and well over her head in trying to not only find Lenoria but deal with the police, who were insistent that she knew something she claimed she didn't.
Yet, others that had an active role in the case - namely, the judge who oversaw Berlean's case with Washington's DSHS - would state that Berlean seemed devastated by Lenoria's disappearance. According to them, Berlean seemed to legitimately care about Lenoria and wanted her found safe, but these details weren't as widely reported in the press as the police statements.
That being said... there are many things with Berlean's accounting of events that I have a hard time reconciling with this train of thought. Because at the end of the day, Lenoria disappeared under her watch, and she was someone that looked after children for a living. As far as I can tell, other than a minor complaint with the state, Berlean had been operating a day-care center for a decade at the time of Lenoria's disappearance without any issues. Yet she somehow managed to lose Lenoria somewhere in the parking lot of a Target without noticing for several more minutes? If that's the case, then something doesn't add up.
But I have a hard time overlooking this aspect of the case, which I think has led to many viewing the details of this story through a lens. For all I know, there are other details regarding Lenoria's disappearance that may explain away some of Berlean's actions or accounts of things. But we should always remember in stories like these that a lot of the information is presented in a very one-sided manner, and it's important to try and find context where it may not always be readily apparent. So just keep these details in mind moving forward.
In March of 1996, prosecutors in Pierce County announced that no charges would be filed against Berlean Williams for the disappearance of her great-niece, Lenoria Jones. Certain officials had been floating the idea of charging Berlean with custodial interference, which they viewed as the only felony with any chance of being prosecutable with the available evidence... but even that had been ruled against.
Speaking to reporters, Kitty-Ann van Doorninck, the administrative deputy prosecutor, stated:
"We don't have enough to charge her. We would need to say that she was attempting to conceal the child. That's the threshold we can't meet."
A short time later - in the Spring of 1996 - investigators would question Lenoria's maternal grandparents, Frank and Annie Jones, who lived across the state in Spokane. If you recall, Frank and Annie were Berlean's brother and sister-in-law, whose daughter, Diedre, was Lenoria's mother. Frank and Annie had been vying for custody of Lenoria before her disappearance and had been vocal advocates for police to charge Berlean with something - anything - believing that she was hiding information from investigators.
During this round of questioning, investigators flew to Spokane to re-interview the Jones, who had already been previously questioned. The two were also asked to administer polygraph tests.
Authorities insisted that they were just finishing up another round of interviews in an attempt to restart their investigation, but it seemed to many that they were just kicking their tires... doing the same thing over and over again and magically hoping for a different result.
From this point forward, media coverage of Lenoria, Berlean, and everyone else involved in their lives seemed to fall off the map. As one year approached since Lenoria had gone missing, people in Washington became less and less interested in the story of a missing black girl from Hilltop, and Lenoria's story would become the type of story that was only ever mentioned in passing or in reference to another.
Because police were never able to find any evidence implicating any of Lenoria's family in her mysterious disappearance, many have theorized that someone else may have played a role.
The theory of an opportunistic predator abducting Lenoria has been a concern in this case from the very minute Lenoria was reported missing. While there was never any evidence to support this theory, the absence of any material evidence pointing to other theories has to include the possibility... right?
Before we begin to broach the subject of someone abducting Lenoria, we have to touch upon the very notion. As far as we know, Lenoria was with her great-aunt Berlean up until she reached the Target parking lot, meaning she would have had to have been abducted in a very public place in broad daylight - without being seen or heard by Berlean or anyone else in the vicinity.
While this may seem ridiculous, it's not impossible. So before we continue, let me back up for a moment and remind you of a story I've previously covered, which bears a lot of similarities to Lenoria.
Teekah Lewis was a young black girl that was living in the Tacoma area at the time of her abduction, just a few years after Lenoria's. Lenoria, who was 3 years old, went missing in July of 1995. Teekah, who went missing in January of 1999, was two-and-a-half, just a few months younger than Lenoria at the time of her disappearance.
Both went missing in the same general vicinity. Teekah Lewis went missing at a bowling alley along the 4700 block of Tacoma's Center Street, while Lenoria was reported missing at the Target along the 3300 block of South 23rd Street. This is a distance of approximately a mile-and-a-half, and both locations are just off of Washington's SR-16, a highway that is itself an offshoot of Interstate 5, which runs north and south throughout the west coast.
Both also went missing during what were deemed very opportunistic moments... moments where their families had taken their eyes off of them. In Lenoria's case, she was supposedly walking behind her great-aunt in the parking lot of a Target, walking in from their van to the store in the morning hours. In Teekah's case, she was with her family during an evening outing at a bowling alley in Tacoma and had been walking back and forth between her family (who were bowling in a lane) and an arcade just feet away. In both cases, their guardians had taken their eyes off of them for a moment before losing them forever.
Unlike Lenoria, Teekah is ardently believed to have been abducted by a predator, making her a rare case of stranger abduction. That man - who has never been identified - is believed to have been between 30-40 years old, standing around 5'11" with a slightly heavyset or husky build, a thick mustache, shoulder-length curly brown hair, a large nose, and what has been described as a pockmarked face. He was believed to have been wearing a blue plaid shirt at the time and driving a maroon or purple Pontiac Grand Am.
While we have no evidence that Lenoria was similarly abducted - no descriptions of any potential suspects exist - the two may share a similar fate. The unknown man who is believed to have abducted Teekah Lewis has never been identified and based on his actions in her case - abducting her from a busy bowling alley just feet away from her family - we can only surmise that he may have acted again. If Lenoria was his first victim, was Teekah his second?
One of the potential offenders linked to Lenoria's case was Terapon Adhahn, a 42-year-old immigrant who pleaded guilty to the 2007 rape and murder of 12-year-old Zina Linnik, herself a Ukrainian immigrant. Like the other two stories - Lenoria Jones and Teekah Lewis - this was a story that unfolded in Hilltop, not too far away from where Lenoria had gone missing in 1995 and Teekah had disappeared in 1999.
In 2007, Terapon Adhahn was a 42-year-old Thai immigrant who had been in the United States for over 30 years. After the divorce of his natural parents, his mother remarried an American airman, resulting in their family moving to San Diego in 1977. After becoming an adult, Adhahn had gone on to enlist in the Army himself in 1983, and then re-enlisted once, just a few years later. After joining the Army, Adhahn would get stationed at Fort Lewis - just south of Tacoma. That was where he and his wife, Barbara, decided to settle down. The two had been married in 1986 and would go on to have two children, who were both raised in the Tacoma area.
After leaving the Army, Adhahn would become an all-around handyman, who not only found work as a mechanic and a tow-truck driver but would also remodel homes. However, it seems like his constant career changes might have been borne out of necessity rather than choice, seeing as Adhahn had some trouble keeping a clean record.
Back in 1990, Terapon Adhahn had been convicted of rape and incest, having forced himself on his own half-sister, who was just sixteen years old at the time. For this, he would spend just two months in prison but would be forced to attend court-ordered therapy for five years after his release, having been diagnosed as a pedophile ahead of his trial. During these therapy sessions, his counselor, Dr. Michael Comte would assess Adhahn as "a devious, manipulative, aggressive and over-controlling personality with clear-cut power needs" as well as "a disturbed individual who has constant difficulty acknowledging his problems."
Because of his legal resident status - after having served in the Armed Forces - Terapon Adhahn was not deported back to Thailand, his nation of birth. However, he did have to register as a sex offender... which it's worth noting, he would fail to do in the years to come.
During therapy sessions over the next several years, Adhahn would admit to his therapist that he was indeed a pedophile, who had long been harboring sexual thoughts of children, including his own half-sister. At the same time, Adhahn seemed to deflect the blame of his perversion on an older brother, whom he says had sexually abused him as a child. He also claimed that their father had been just as abusive; if not sexually, then physically and emotionally.
Despite making this admission, though, Terapon's counselor would later describe him as a quality patient, who finished up his therapy sessions in 1997. After doing so, he was labeled a Level 1 sex offender... the type least likely to re-offend.
Over the next several years, Terapon would keep a low profile, but his name would begin to make headlines throughout the region in the summer months of 2007.
On the evening of July 4th, 2007, the father of 12-year-old Zina Linnik witnessed a gray van speeding out of his neighborhood at around the same time he noticed that his daughter had disappeared. He was able to remember a partial license plate, which he gave to the police, leading to an immediate canvas of the area. Using the partial license plate and vehicle description given to them by the father, police were able to learn about a vehicle pulled over for prowling on May 1st. The description of the gray vans matched, but the license plates were different. Regardless, police decided to check out the property of the man in question, who lived in the Tacoma suburb of Parkland.
On July 8th, 2007 - nearly four days after Zina Linnik's disappearance - police searched Terapon Adhahn's home, finding several undergarments belonging to young girls as well as multiple license plates (one of which matched the one from the description of Zina's father).
During their inquest into Terapon Adhahn - who had been pulled over for prowling in the area approximately two months before Zina Linnik's disappearance - police had discovered that Terapon fit the profile of a child predator. Not only had he been previously arrested for sexual assault of a minor - his own sister - but he had failed to register as a sex offender, and had also been slapped with immigration charges in the past.
Shortly after he was arrested, Terapon would stop openly cooperating with investigators. However, through his lawyer, he would begin to feed them evidence of his crime, including the location of Zina Linnik's remains. In the end, he was charged with her rape and murder, and would plead guilty to the crime in 2008 to avoid the death penalty. Later, he was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
In the years since, Terapon Adhahn has been linked to other offenses in the area, including the rape and abduction of 11-year-old Sabrina Rasmussen in May of 2000. This was in an area not too far away from where Zina Linnik was abducted - which was just a few miles from where Teekah Lewis and Lenoria Jones both disappeared. However, in the case of Sabrina Rasmussen, Adhahn has actually been linked to the case through witness descriptions and DNA evidence; yet no charges have been filed, perhaps due to Adhahn's current fate.
Adhahn is also believed to have raped an underage family friend, whose family was unable to care for her and sent her to live with Adhahn and his family for a time. Over the next few years, Adhahn would subject this poor girl to repeated abuse, including at least once at gunpoint; as well as abusing her physically in other ways.
For a time, Terapon Adhahn was also linked to the murder of 10-year-old Adre'Anna Jackson, an Indigenous American girl abducted in December of 2005 from her neighborhood in nearby Tillicum. Although no definitive evidence ever surfaced in that case, it remains one of the most tragic and mysterious in the Pacific Northwest.
The only issue I have with the theory that Terapon Adhahn might be linked to the cases of Lenoria Jones and Teekah Lewis is that he seemed to target victims of an older demographic; all of his victims and alleged victims were between 10-16 years old, significantly older than both Lenoria and Teekah. However, he did express a willingness to abduct his victims in high-population areas - occasionally just blocks away from where Teekah and Lenoria went missing.
This eagerness to commit such brazen abductions leads me to think that Terapon Adhahn may have committed more crimes than proven at this point. While he was briefly investigated by Tacoma police for Lenoria's disappearance, due to the lack of any evidence, he was never charged. Today, he remains incarcerated at the Washington State Pen in Walla Walla, and his inmate number is 968071.
Other potential offenders, in this case, include Guy Rasmussen, a musician arrested in 1996 for the murder of 9-year-old Cynthia Allinger, who had been abducted from an apartment complex near McChord Air Force Base, where she lived with her family. This was not too far away from where Lenoria had disappeared from. He wa s later sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole, having had a prior history of assaulting children; including the 1982 sexual assault of a 16-year-old (leading to five years in prison) and the 1990 assault of a 10-year-old girl (resulting in five months in prison).
Then there is Gary Hartman, a 70-year-old man arrested in 2018 for the rape and murder of 12-year-old Michella Welch, who had originally gone missing on March 26th, 1986. Welch's body was found just hours after disappearing, having been abducted from Puget Park in Tacoma, where she had been playing with her sisters. Hartman was later linked through genetic genealogy from semen left at the crime scene and was later sentenced to more than 26 years in prison... assuring that he would die behind bars.
The only issue I have with these men - and most other potential suspects in this case, including Terapon Adhahn - is that their victims were almost always older girls, prepubescent girls and teenagers. I know that this distinction may be lost on some of you who think that their victim selection isn't that precise. But victimology tells us that even these types of criminals - the worst of the worst, who prey upon children - tend to have a "type."
In the case of these two men, Guy Rasmussen and Gary Hartman, their victims were older white girls. In none of their known cases did they ever target young black girls under the age of four. The same could be said for Terapon Adhahn, who it is worth noting crossed racial barriers in his known crimes, but never for girls near Lenoria's age.
That being said, as I mentioned in the Teekah Lewis episode back in 2020 (and even on the Misty Copsey episodes back in 2016), this region was ripe with sexual offenders preying on children when Lenoria Jones went missing in the mid-1990s. In no way is the number of potential suspects limited to the few men I've mentioned in this episode.
The fact that Lenoria's case remains unsolved decades later means that if she was targeted by an unknown offender - if this were to be a rare, legitimate case of stranger abduction - then this offender has gotten incredibly lucky. We can only hope that if this was Lenoria's fate that her offender's luck runs out someday... the sooner the better.
Lenoria Jones was reported missing by her family on July 20th, 1995. However, by the time her family reported her missing that fateful Thursday, no one outside of her family had seen her for days prior. Lenoria hadn't been seen by a non-family member since July 16th, when the family had gone to church, so multiple days near the end of her life remain clouded in mystery... at least, depending upon whether or not you choose to believe her family.
Lenoria's great-aunt, Berlean Williams, claimed Lenoria had gone missing at Target after 9:00 AM, having made her call to police at approximately 9:42. However, it was later determined that Berlean had made a separate call to her family at approximately 8:47 AM - nearly one hour prior - in which she claimed to have said that Lenoria was missing after shopping at Top Foods. More concerning, after this trip to Top Foods, Berlean had made trips to a gas station and car wash before getting to Target, and as reported by Tacoma police spokesman Jim Mattheis: Leno
"The clerk (at the gas station) didn't see anyone in the van."
Whether or not you believe Berlean to be guilty of any wrongdoing in this case, it's impossible to ignore her timeline being incredibly murky. Based on her statements in the public record, it seems like she never really knew when or where Lenoria had disappeared - whether it was at Target or Top Foods, before or after 8:00 AM - and no one outside of Berlean's family can account for Lenoria's whereabouts for nearly four days before her disappearance. On the day-in-question, Berlean was the only person to have seen Lenoria after 6:00 AM, when one of Berlean's daughters had seen Lenoria in the family's home sleeping.
It has even been reported that Lenoria's mother had tried calling two days prior to her daughter going missing, but was turned down. Diedre wasn't able to speak to Lenoria at the time and - if we believe that she had nothing to do with her daughter going missing - never would again.
Any leads that surfaced in this case dried up incredibly quickly after Lenoria's disappearance. Police were unable to find any trace of the missing girl... it was as if she had fallen into a hole in the earth. While no evidence of her death was ever found, police began treating the case as a homicide when it became clear that she wasn't going to be found.
Speaking to the News Tribune in July of 2000, Detective Larry Ihlen stated:
"I personally believe she's dead."
Then, speaking to the Tribune in July of 2015, Detective Lindsey Wade said:
"It's a difficult case. You've got no crime scene, no body, no witnesses. You basically have nothing but the hope somebody is going to talk."
However, in the same article - published on July 20th, 2015 - Detective Wade let slip that an anonymous tipster had called into police nearly twenty years prior, in August of 1995, with information that wasn't known to the general public. Per Detective Wade:
"This person could be the key to solving this case if their information is correct."
If this person is you or is someone you might know... please reach out to authorities. You can contact Tacoma Police-Crimestoppers at 253-591-5959, and you can remain anonymous if you like. Please, all we want is your information. This mysterious disappearance remains unsolved, but you may hold the key to bringing closure to this little girl, who deserved so much better in life than she got. Her disappearance is currently classified as a non-family abduction and her current whereabouts are unknown, with authorities not knowing whether she's dead or alive.
While I'd personally like to think that Lenoria is still alive out there, I'll just have to hold out hope that - someday - we'll get answers in this case. Until such a time, the story of Lenoria Jones will remain unresolved.
Episode Information
Episode Information
Research, writing, hosting, and production by Micheal Whelan
Published on June 19th, 2022
Music Credits
Original music created by Micheal Whelan through Amper Music
Theme music created and composed by Ailsa Traves
Sources and other reading
https://charleyproject.org/case/lenoria-eleise-anne-jones
http://www.tpcrimestoppers.com/case.php?id=393
https://rcccmcc.com/2020/05/14/lenoria-eleise-anne-jones/
https://www.newspapers.com/image/567274338/?terms=Lenoria%20Jones&match=1
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https://www.newspapers.com/image/673797144/?terms=Lenoria%20Jones&match=1
https://www.seattlepi.com/local/article/State-Patrol-refreshes-case-of-missing-girl-1273698.php
https://mynorthwest.com/12565/cold-case-detectives-refuse-to-give-up-solving-tacoma-child-disappearances/