Episode 08: Closing Statements

On Sunday morning, August 12, 1984, thirteen-year-old Eugene Wade Martin left his home in Des Moines, Iowa, to deliver the Sunday paper. He was five days away from his fourteenth birthday. He was saving money for the fair and a bicycle. But somewhere along the way, Eugene's paper route stopped. His newspapers were found. But Eugene was gone. Less than two years earlier, another Des Moines Register carrier, Johnny Gosch, had vanished from his own Sunday morning route. So when Eugene disappeared, the fear in Des Moines shifted. What had once seemed like an ordinary childhood job now felt exposed, vulnerable, and dangerous. In this episode of SEQUESTERED, we trace the morning Eugene disappeared, the witnesses who may have seen him speaking with an unknown man, the flood of tips that followed, and the massive search that covered neighborhoods, riverbanks, wooded areas, and nearly seventy square miles. We also look at what Eugene's disappearance did to his family; the phone calls, the license plates, the Apple II computer filled with names, and the long vigil of parents who never stopped looking.

On the first day of summer break in 1983, 12-year-old Ann Gotlib rides her bike home through the parking lot of Bashford Manor Mall in Louisville, Kentuky, then vanishes. Her bicycle is later found outside a department store. But Ann is gone. In the days that follow, witnesses report seeing a man dragging a young girl near a field and drainage ditch not far from the mall. Police release a composite sketch. Search teams comb through woods, creeks, and shoulder-high grass. And investigators begin chasing a case built almost entirely on fragments. A goodbye in a parking lot. A possible sighting inside the mall. A mysterious phone call. A hitchhiker story that briefly changes everything. And decades later, a dead man publicly named by police as the prime suspect. In this episode, Sara Reid retraces the disappearance of Ann Gotlib, a bright 12-year-old daughter of Soviet Jewish immigrants whose case became part of a national shift in how America responds to missing children. But more than 40 years later, Ann has still never been found.

Jennifer Marteliz was seven years old when she disappeared while walking home from school in Tampa, Florida, on November 15, 1982. She was only blocks from home. Witnesses later described seeing Jennifer upset near a crossing guard and possibly near a rust-colored car shortly before she vanished. What should have been an ordinary walk home became one of Florida's most haunting unsolved child disappearance cases. In Episode 3 of SEQUESTERED Season Four, Sara Reid reconstructs Jennifer's final known moments through witness accounts, search records, media reporting, and the growing fractures inside the investigation itself. As police and volunteers searched neighborhoods, drainage pipes, vacant lots, and wooded areas across Tampa, the case slowly became defined by uncertainty: conflicting sightings, theories that never fully fit, and a timeline that seemed impossibly small for a child to disappear without a trace. More than forty years later, Jennifer Marteliz has never been found. And the few minutes between school and home still remain unexplained.

On May 4, 2026, Jason Chen returned to Hamilton County Criminal Court in Chattanooga, Tennessee, asking for a new trial in the murder case of Jasmine Pace. Chen's defense argued that issues from the original trial warranted another chance to make his case, including questions about evidence, the search of Chen's apartment, and the presence of Jasmine's family members in the courtroom. Judge Boyd Patterson denied the motion, stating that the arguments had already been litigated and that the court would rely on the same conclusions previously reached. For Sara Reid, Juror Number 11 in the original trial, this update is not just a legal development. It is a return to the courtroom, the evidence, the verdict, and the weight of what the jury was asked to decide. In this bonus episode of SEQUESTERED, Sara walks through the latest ruling, what it means for the conviction and sentence, and why Jasmine Pace remains at the center of this story. The verdict stands. The sentence remains in place. And Jasmine is not forgotten.

In September of 1981, the Oklahoma State Fair was in full swing; bright lights, crowded walkways, and the kind of place where parents felt safe letting their kids roam free. That's where 13-year-old friends Charlotte Kinsey and Cinda Pallett were last seen. After being offered what seemed like a harmless job unloading stuffed animals, the girls left the fairgrounds with a man they didn't know. They even called home to tell their parents about the job, and were told to call back later to arrange a ride. That call never came. What followed was a nationwide search, a critical witness account that extended their final known movements beyond the fairgrounds, and a suspect investigators believed had done this before. But despite mounting evidence, a chilling pattern, and years of investigation, the case would collapse in court. More than four decades later, Charlotte and Cinda have never been found. And the man many believe responsible was never convicted of their murders. This is the disappearance of Charlotte Kinsey and Cinda Pallett.