Vanished Without A Trace

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Two women vanish in Arkansas, sixteen years apart, and the details still don’t sit right.

In this episode, we examine the disappearance of 18-year-old Cleashindra Hall in Pine Bluff in 1994 and art teacher Mary “Jimmie” Bobo Shinn in Magnolia in 1978. Two very different lives. Two very different towns. The same outcome: unanswered questions and investigations that lost traction early.

We walk through what went wrong and why it mattered. What happens when the last known location is someone else’s home? When the only narrative comes from the people who controlled the space, and that space gets cleaned, rearranged, or repainted before police ever look? How does a routine house showing end with a dumped purse, cash untouched, and tennis shoes jammed beneath the pedals of an abandoned car?

We talk plainly about investigative blind spots: delayed entry to critical scenes, chain-of-custody failures that destroy potential forensic evidence, witness canvasses that never quite lock in, and the damaging assumption that adults simply “left.” We also place both cases in their time. Pine Bluff in the 1990s. Magnolia in the late 1970s. How race, social standing, and small-town dynamics shaped urgency, attention, and follow-through.

We also cut through the noise. Psychics. Private investigator versus police friction. Sketches so generic they could be half the state. Theories that don’t match the evidence don’t help anyone.

This episode is about what can still be done. Retesting with modern DNA methods. Re-entering prints and materials into national databases. Re-canvassing with the benefit of time and honesty. And talking openly about common-sense safety practices that didn’t exist when these women disappeared.

Cold cases don’t close themselves. People close them.

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Things I Want To Know
Where two stubborn humans poke the darkness with a stick and hope it blinks first. If you know something about a case, report it to the actual police before you come knocking on our door. After that, sure, tell us. We’re already in too deep anyway.

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