Crime Junkie - MISSING: Lauren Dumolo

Episode Date: January 17, 2022

When Lauren Dumolo disappeared, she left behind a ton of questions, a mystery that keeps unfolding and a family desperately searching for answers. If you know anything about the disappearance of Lauren Dumolo, please contact the Cape Coral Police Department at 239-574-3223 or CrimeStoppers at 1-800-780-TIPS, referencing case number 20-011323.National Domestic Violence Hotline: [phone]-SAFE (7233); for TTY: 1-800-787-3224Text “START” to 88788Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) National Helpline: 1-800-662-HELP (4357)  For current Fan Club membership options and policies, please visit https://crimejunkieapp.com/library/. Source materials for this episode cannot be listed here due to character limitations. For a full list of sources, please visit https://crimejunkiepodcast.com/missing-lauren-dumolo/

Hi, crime junkies. I'm your host, Ashley Flowers. And I'm Britt. And the story I have for you today is about a woman whose disappearance is a mystery that keeps unfolding while a family desperately searches for answers. This is the story of Lauren D'Amolo. It's Friday night, June 19, 2020, and when Paul D'Amolo's phone rings, he answers it and he's surprised to hear his daughter's boyfriend, Gabriel Pena, on the other line. Paul isn't close with Gabriel, or Gabby as he's called, even though he and Paul's

daughter Lauren have been dating for years. I mean, in fact, they haven't even met yet. Gabby and Lauren live in Cape Coral, which is in southwest Florida, and Paul actually lives across the country in California. But this isn't a social call. According to a police report Paul gave us, Gabby tells Paul that he got home from work that night, like normal around 10 p.m., but Lauren was nowhere to be found. And here's Paul, who spoke with one of our reporters, Nina. Paul's not freaking out right away. I mean, Lauren isn't a teenager, she's almost 30, so he tells Gabby to have Lauren call him when she gets home, figuring that he's going

to hear from her soon. So he waits and waits, but the call never comes. By Saturday, Paul still hasn't heard a word from his daughter, so he calls Gabby at work. One sister, Cassie, reaches out to the Cape Coral Police Department and asks them to do a wellness check at the apartment. The police send an officer over to check it out, but no one answers the door, and at this point, they really don't have any probable cause that's going to allow them to go in uninvited, break the door down. So has Gabby been looking for Lauren during this time, or is he just kind of business as usual, or just kind of keeping his cool like her dad was?

Well, when Paul talks to Gabby a few hours later that afternoon, Gabby mentions that he did look for Lauren in a couple of places once he got off work, but he couldn't find her. And I think at this point, they're all kind of hoping there's still a chance that she's just going to walk through the door. But if she does come home that night, Gabby won't know because he mentions to Paul that he isn't going to stay at her place that night like he does most nights. He's actually planning to go to a friend's house instead. Uh, that's kind of odd. I mean, shouldn't this guy be concerned enough to like stick

around the apartment to see if she comes home? Well, Paul wonders the same thing. Now that brings us to Sunday, June 21st, which is Father's Day, and there is still no sign of Lauren. And not hearing from her is weird because Paul has basically raised Lauren and her sisters as a single dad in Maryland until Lauren was older and she went to stay with her mom in Florida. But even after she moved, she and Paul remained super close. So as the day drags on and he still doesn't hear from her, he knows something is seriously wrong, especially because her family knows that just a few days ago on the 18th, so we're talking literally like the day before Paul thinks Lauren is

missing, Lauren had been released from a mental health facility for the second time that month. Both times she was admitted, it was involuntary and she was able to be admitted that way under a law called the Florida Baker Act. According to reporting by Caitlin Greenockle of the Fort Myers News Press, the Baker Act essentially allows families and officials to provide emergency mental health services and temporary detention for up to 72 hours if a person is considered a threat to themselves or to others. Okay, so why was Lauren committed? Well, she had recently been experiencing paranoia, hallucinations, and symptoms of psychosis, which had never happened to her before. She was hospitalized for the first time on June 1st because according

to what Paul was told by the facility, Lauren had jumped into a lake, the Bimini Basin, which is right next to a park that she liked to visit called Four Freedoms Park. And I guess she jumped in because she thought something or someone was after her. Now, Lauren did struggle with substance use disorder. After she got in a car accident in her late teens, she became addicted to the opioid painkillers that she was prescribed and eventually she started using heroin. She had stopped for a while but then relapsed. And Lauren's drug use had led to her losing custody of her young daughter, Mikayla, which devastated her. But her family says that it had also motivated her to make some serious life changes. Mikayla

was living a couple of hours away with her grandmother and Lauren's main goal in life was getting her back. So she stopped using heroin. So the time that we're talking about June of 2020, Paul says that she had been off the drug for nearly two years. So that's not contributing to her acting this way. She did smoke marijuana occasionally but Paul had never known Lauren to use anything that would cause a side effect like the ones the hospital described to him. Anyway, Lauren was hospitalized for a week that first time and shortly after they admitted her, they did a drug screen which only showed the opioid blocker, suboxone and THC in her system. But Paul wondered if maybe Lauren had been drugged with something

that the toxicology screen maybe missed or maybe was out of her system by then. The whole incident just seemed so out of the ordinary. Plus, Lauren didn't even seem to remember it very well. So her family was just bewildered. After she was released from the facility, Paul was trying to plan a trip from California to visit her. But this was legit right at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic and there were travel restrictions everywhere, especially for people living in or trying to travel from California. Soon after Lauren was released from her first hospital stay, she was involuntarily admitted again for three days this time because she started having some of the same symptoms. Actually, according to a podcast about Lauren's

disappearance called Complicit, Lauren had recently been pregnant and had an abortion in late May of that year. And I guess medical staff at the hospital determined that she experienced a temporary psychosis due to a chemical imbalance resulting from the procedure. So when they can't find or get ahold of Lauren, is her family thinking that maybe she's going through one of these episodes again, having hallucinations and stuff? Well, I mean, it probably crossed their minds because they knew that Lauren wouldn't just be MIA on her own. I mean, plus her sister Cassie talked to her on Thursday around like 6.30pm and Lauren was worried that she might lose her job at Taco Bell because of all the

days she had missed while she was in the hospital. So Cassie was going to help her apply for unemployment benefits and they were going to do that the next day, which is all the more reason that they believe she wouldn't just walk off on her own. But that next day came and went and Cassie never heard from her sister. So by Sunday, it's been almost three days since anyone in her family has spoken with her. Paul contacts Gabby again and tells him to go to Lauren's apartment, call police and let them like come in and search the place. Remember, they can't just like break down the door, but let them in and see what they can find. But Gabby tells Paul that he doesn't have access to a car.

So he can't go right away. He's going to have to wait for a guy named Victor to give him a ride. Victor and Gabby know each other because they work together at a flooring company. But they're more than just coworkers. You see, Victor is actually the longtime boyfriend of Lauren's mom, who's named Laura. So he's almost like a father-in-law figure. Yeah. I mean, because again, they've been dating for years, so they know each other well. Now on Paul's end, a couple of hours pass with no news. So he calls Gabby again. Gabby tells him that yeah, they went to the apartment. Yes, they contacted the police, but the police just never showed up, which is totally unacceptable to Paul. So he calls

the end to me. Yeah. So he calls the police and he's like, what the heck? And they're like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. We never got any call. I'm not sure who's telling you what, but you're not getting the real story. So Paul calls Gabby back and confronts him and Gabby passes all the blame onto Victor, saying that he didn't want to get police involved. Okay, that's us. Yeah. And by now Paul is fed up. He tells Gabby something like get over to the police department. I don't care how you get there. Walk, crawl, whatever and file a police report now. And I want the case number. So finally Gabby goes down to the Cape Coral police station to file a report. Paul shared a copy of Gabby's statement

with us from that report. And according to the document, Gabby tells police the same thing that he told Paul that he'd spent Thursday night at the apartment with Lauren and saw her when he left for work Friday morning. But then when he got back that night around 10pm, she just wasn't there. And he said that he tried calling police before this, but that they had told him he had to wait 48 hours to report her missing. According to NBC two news, he tells police that Lauren had not made any statements indicating that she wanted to harm herself or anyone else and she wasn't on any medications. Okay, wait, backup. Is it true about what he said about calling police that they said that he'd have

to wait those 48 hours, which is again the stupidest rule in the world? So here's the thing. Paul says that he asked Cape Coral police about that and he was told that Gabby did not call them on Friday night. What? Yeah. And all of this would be caused for major concern under the best circumstances, but Paul has even more of a reason to be worried. Just recently, Lauren had confided something in him that he says she had been keeping a secret for a while. Lauren had called her dad in tears on May 22, 2020. That was the day that she had had the abortion. Lauren's family knew that having an abortion was a really difficult decision for her to make, but she was already trying to get custody

of her daughter who was about to turn six. And she said she wasn't financially stable enough to bring another child into the world. And they understood they wanted to support her. But when she called to tell her dad about this, he learned something else that was very troubling. I'm like, what's the matter, kid? She was dead. You know, I had the abortion today and Gabby came home from work. I was sitting on the couch and I didn't feel good. So I asked him if she would get me, you know, just a bowl of soup. And instead, this is what he did to me. And she took pictures and sent them to me for the first time ever of where he beat her. This was the first time Paul had heard of Gabby being abusive. She

always told me the guy treated like a queen. She didn't want to tell me that this was going on because she knew I would go down there. Now, this whole time Lauren's family is waiting by the phone, but Monday passes with no word from her or the police. So they start mobilizing. Her other sister, Lindsay, manages to get a spare key to Lauren's apartment from their mother. It was actually Gabby's key that he had left with Lauren's mom and Victor. So Cassie and Lindsay and Lindsay's boyfriend, Matt, go to Lauren's apartment on Tuesday, June 23rd. Nothing seems out of the ordinary. There are no signs of a struggle, no signs of a disturbance. They do find a cell phone, but they can't tell if it's

Lauren's and it's not working anyway. But they want the cops to come in and check the place out so they contact the department again. And then something happens that Cassie says changes everything. They are waiting for the police to come. Gabby showed up and was like, oh, I'm here to get my TV because obviously she's not coming back. After that remark, her family is understandably on edge, but their concern grows when Gabby comes out of Lauren's apartment with a cell phone in his hand. It's Lauren's phone. It's the one that she'd been using since she was released from the mental health facility in early June. Gabby says that it was in the apartment, and Cassie notices that it's fully charged,

like 100% battery. So did they just miss it or are you saying he probably had it the entire time? We don't know. Both are a possibility, but neither of those scenarios are good because her family can't imagine a scenario where Lauren would leave and leave her phone behind. Oh, wait, why did Gabby even show up while they were there in the first place? Like if he gave his key to Lauren's mom, how did he know that they were there to even let him in? Well, Paul says that Gabby was supposed to be at work at this time. So he thinks that maybe Lauren's mother told him that they were there so that he gave him the heads up. Right. So eventually police arrived to the apartment responding to Cassie's call and she lays

out all of her concerns. She already doesn't feel like the police are taking this seriously, but then she learns something shocking. There hasn't actually even been a detective assigned to this case yet. In fact, nobody's been working on it. Okay, what? So just to be clear, like her feeling that no one was taking this seriously at the police department is actually quite a fact. Yeah, like no one was actually taking this, maybe not seriously, but no one was working it at all. Yeah, I guess police tell Cassie there was some kind of clerical air with how the report was put into their system, like sometime on Sunday when the report was filed. So apparently Lauren is technically reported missing, but she's not reported

as endangered missing. And the only person who can fix the clerical air just happens to be out of office. Okay, I feel like, correct me if I'm wrong. One, there should be two people. And what is it like a checkbox? Like baffles me baffles me. So even now when they're like, Oh my gosh, there's this mistake, this person's out of office. So it's not until the next day, Wednesday, June 24th, that police assigned a detective, this guy named Nick Jones to the case. Do you know what I would have done? I would have assigned him and left that person who was out of the office a post-it note and said that I did it. Just going to be honest. Yeah, I think a post-it note would have solved it. And according to Wink News,

police also put out a bolo for her and elevated Lauren's case to finally an endangered missing person. And they did this because she didn't take any of her belongings like her cell phone or her clothes. The first alert about Lauren's disappearance says that she was last seen on June 19th, 2020 wearing a t-shirt and shorts in the 49 hundred block of Coronado Parkway, which is the block that her apartment complex is on. But by this time, it's been practically a full week since anyone in Lauren's family has heard from her. And obviously that's a huge disadvantage. So the best police can do is start canvassing the neighborhood, getting info from her family, gathering data from Lauren's electronic devices to try and help

them track down her movements in the days and hours leading up to her disappearance. Meanwhile, Paul gets to Florida on Wednesday night. And as police conduct their investigation, Lauren's friends and family launch their own. And right away, their efforts pay off. On Thursday, June 25th, Paul, Cassie and some other relatives go over to Lauren's apartment. Outside of her front door, they find some acrylic fingernails, a metal shower curtain hook and an earring. Now the fingernails are orange. And according to People magazine, they look just like the design Lauren had in a recent Facebook photo that she posted. Hold up. How did all those things get missed? I mean, the police have already been there

plus her sisters and Gabby. I don't know. Like this one makes my mind hurt. Because like you said, you would think police had gone to search the apartment that not only are they searching inside, you think that they would check outside. So I'm like even her sisters, like I'm thinking like as a sister, I would think of something that would be like so tied to my sister's fashion choices or like orange, that's going to stand out. You're going to see it, right? I just that's baffling. I don't know. But in the end, Cassie says that we know once she notices this that police do come and collect it after she lets them know about it. But the family doesn't even

stop there. They visit the local bus stop and speak with the people who regularly ride the bus that Lauren used to take. But they haven't even seen Lauren for the last week. So the next stop they make is the Taco Bell she had worked at. And they find out that she never picked up her last paycheck, which for someone living paycheck to paycheck just doesn't happen. Plus, it's more proof that she didn't just skip town because you know, money is kind of helpful to do something like that. Right. Over the next few days, they talk to her friends and people who live near her apartment. They organize searches, they hand out flyers, they post on social media, anything they can think

to do to get the word out to bring Lauren home. And actually for freedoms park, the spot Lauren liked to go near Bimini Basin becomes kind of the hub of a lot of this activity. For freedoms is a popular spot with residents. They're like events, concerts, there's a beach, a playground and Lauren went there all the time to meditate. It's within walking distance of her apartment, which was important to her since she doesn't have a driver's license or a car. And it's also right across the street from her mom and victor's place. So it was a super convenient spot for her. So knowing how much time she spent there, her family makes searching it a regular part of their routine. They go multiple times a

day to look for any clues that they can find. And they even give interviews to the media there. On Saturday, June 27th, Paul and Cassie head to for freedoms like usual. And that's when they learned that police are also focusing on that area. The Cape Coral PD has its dive team there in the basin next to the park, the same basin that Lauren had apparently jumped in earlier that month. And Detective Jones told them that they're searching the basin and the canals for Lauren. When her family asks why police are searching in that area, they're shocked to find out that Lauren's purse and her shoes had been found in for freedoms park back on June 19th. What? Yeah, Cape Coral police says that a homeless man

had found it on a table under a gazebo and turned it in on an episode of investigation discoveries in pursuit, the missing. Detective Jones says that he learned about the purse being found when he was first assigned to the case, which was actually one of the big reasons Lauren's designation was elevated to endangered missing person. Everything was still in there, her wallet, her ID, her keys. The only thing that wasn't in there was her cell phone, which Gabby says, remember when he came later, like he found in the apartment. Jones says that's not the only major Lee that they've been following up on. Police, I guess, were out canvassing the neighborhood when they went into a gas station to ask if

anyone had seen Lauren. And a clerk tells them, yeah, I know her and she was here just a few days ago filling out a job application. Sure enough, surveillance footage from the Speedway gas station less than a half mile from her apartment shows Lauren around 1140 a.m. on Thursday, June 18. Now that was within just a couple of hours of her getting released from the mental health facility. And, you know, remember, she was worried about her employment situation. She thought she was going to lose her job at Taco Bell because of how long she'd been in the hospital. So really, she got out and she went right to work looking for a job in the footage. She seems to be okay. Like she's smiling. She's

joking around with the clerk who gives her the application. You can see that she's wearing a pink shirt and black pants. And according to NBC two news, the purse that she's carrying is the same one that was found in the park the next day on the 19th. But that's not all. Detective Jones told Investigation Discovery that an area maintenance worker at her and Gabby's apartment building saw Lauren around 8 a.m. on Friday, June 19. She was apparently walking from Four Freedoms Park back to her apartment. Now, there are a few different narratives out there about this guy. According to Wink News, the man said that not only did he see Lauren that Friday morning, he also spoke with her the day before on June 18.

He said that Lauren had asked him if there were any apartments available in the area and told him that she, quote, wanted to get out of the situation she was in, end quote. Now, to be clear, he's not identified as a maintenance man in that news story, but it's possible we're talking about the same guy because according to NBC two news, there are reports that a maintenance worker at Lauren's apartment complex spoke with her at the some point Friday morning and that she had asked him if he knew of any cheap apartments in the area. And this whole thing is like really odd to her family because they knew that Lauren had just paid her rent. Like why is she looking for something right away? Right. And Lauren's

sister Cassie says a maintenance guy named Tim, who works at a completely different apartment complex nearby, not Lauren's, reported seeing Lauren on Friday around 8 a.m. walking from Four Freedoms Park to her apartment. But Cassie also says there's no hard evidence that Lauren was seen at all that morning or anytime on Friday. We just have these couple of eyewitness statements that we can't prove. And really, her family thinks it's possible that Lauren went missing on the night of Thursday, the 18th, some time between when Cassie last spoke with her and Friday morning. And I don't know if this means anything. It might just be something I'm reading into a little bit too much. But

when police put out a longer statement about Lauren's disappearance, which is a few days after that first alert, they say now that she was last seen at her apartment. Now, to me, that sounds a little bit different than when they initially said that she was last seen, like on the block that her complex was on. Right. Again, I don't know how much to read into that or if they were just being vague before, but they always thought it was their apartment. I don't know. Now, meanwhile, there's friction building between the police and Paul, who's frustrated about the progress of the investigation, but the family makes sure to give police all the information they can. And that includes sharing everything

they know about Lauren, including stuff that they were learning as they tried to retrace her steps. By all accounts, Lauren was a kind, generous and giving person, the type of person who would do anything for the people she loved. She had a huge infectious smile and a knack for cheering people up when they were down. And above all else, she loved being a mom to Makayla. But we know she also had her struggles. She hung out with people that her sister Cassie calls unfavorable characters. And obviously her relationship with Gabby wasn't as happy as she pretended it was. They would often break up and then get back together. Paul finds out that Lauren had actually told some people that Gabby was abusive, although

it seems like she kept it from many of the people that she was closest to, again, including her family. It was just like a total secret. But there was something else that she hadn't shared with many people, including her family. Lauren actually wasn't sure who she'd gotten pregnant by this most recent time. Cassie finds out through a friend of Lauren's that while she and Gabby were on one of their off periods, Lauren had actually dated another guy and she thought it was possible that she was pregnant by him. She wasn't sure if it was Gabby's or someone else's. It's kind of called true. It was a big drug deal. But from what I was told from one of the girls she works with, Lauren

wasn't doing drugs, but she felt safe with Carl because Gabby was always beating up on her. So did Gabby know about this other guy? Wait, honestly, let's back up. Did Gabby even know Lauren was pregnant or that she had an abortion at all? Cassie says that they all talked about the situation together when she visited Lauren and Gabby on June 13, just a few days before Lauren went missing. When I talked about her abortion and Gabby was there with us and they were like, yeah, we just decided that like financially we're not in a good place to bring another child

into the world. I'm fighting to bring Makayla home and I feel like it wouldn't be fair to her for me to like have another baby. And Paul thinks that Gabby did know about Carl. He says they found a journal of Lauren's in her apartment when they were cleaning it out and Carl's address was written in the journal, but it was written not in Lauren's handwriting. They think it was written in handwriting that to them looks more like Gabby's. As June turns to July, her family doesn't give up hope. They stick to their routine, which includes daily searches of For Freedoms Park hoping to find some kind of clue that

will lead them to Lauren. And so they're stunned when on July 2nd, during their second search of the park that day, not even of all time, but just that day, they find something half buried in the sand near the basin waterline. They found Lauren's shirt. What? Yep. Cassie immediately recognizes the burgundy lace shirt. It's unique and Lauren wore it all the time. I mean, there were even recent pictures of her in the shirt on social media, but the real question everyone wants to know is like, how did it get there? That shirt wasn't there for three weeks because I was through this park. I did a news interview

right in that same spot. And the newscast was right there, you know, with their cameras and tripods and everything. There was no shirt there. That shirt was planted there for whatever reason. It was completely clean. There are surveillance cameras in the park, and according to NBC2, detectives confirmed that they tried to pull footage to see when and how the shirt got there. But police tell Cassie that they can't determine much from the video. They could see like from the night before some guys kicking around the sand and then some guy pulls up the shirt and just leaves it there.

Okay. If there are cameras in the park, could they see who put her person's shoes there back on June 19th? Apparently, I guess the place where her purse was found is actually right out of line of vision of the camera. Obviously, though, the park has become a focus point for police. In fact, they bring cadaver dogs in to search it on July 20th, but the cadaver dogs aren't interested in Four Freedoms Park. Instead, they lead police across the street to the home of Lauren's mother, Laura and her boyfriend, Victor. The cadaver dogs alert on the van parked in Laura and Victor's driveway. This isn't

just any van either. It's the one Gabby and Victor use for work. And Paul says that they would take the van home with them all the time. Gabby even had it with him when Lauren went missing. But the dogs aren't done. They keep going, leading investigators up the stairs to Victor and Laura's apartment, right to a curtain in front of their washer and dryer. Police take everything they come across in for forensic testing. Now there was already a little bit of a divide in the family by the time the cadaver dogs showed up. It had been forming since Father's Day. I mean, remember Victor was the one who apparently didn't want police involved in Lauren's disappearance that day. And I guess

Cassie had also asked Victor to check Lauren's apartment while they were over there. So after he went, she asked him if he gave it a thorough search. You know, did you look in the closets under the bed everywhere? And Cassie says that Victor started making snarky comments and jokes at this point. I guess he compared his search to a where's Waldo and told her that he even checked the fridge. And things just kept kind of like escalating over the past month. Like Laura and Victor hadn't helped in any of the search efforts to find Lauren. And they had been really protective of Gabby, who also hadn't joined in on any kind of search efforts. Apparently they were always defending him and telling Lauren sisters

what a good guy he is. So as you can imagine, this latest discovery, these these dogs hitting on the apartment doesn't exactly bring everyone closer together. And Victor and Laura and that side of the family feel like everyone is against them. Okay, but this is a police investigation. It's not like Paul or Cassie like made the dogs go over there. Not only did he not make him go over there, apparently that side of the family didn't even know it was happening until later that day, let alone what the outcome would be. But ultimately, again, I don't even know if it matters because what's wild is that the cadaver dog search doesn't even give police any evidence that they can use. Investigators tell the family,

the dogs actually made a mistake alerting to the van because of the fact that Victor and Gabby work with flooring. They say I guess that the dogs could have like picked up the scent of a carpet that might have been from a deceased person's home, or they even throw out the idea of maybe menstrual blood. I don't know. Okay, but what about the curtain? Well, that's another disappointment. The forensic tests on that don't turn up anything. But not all is dead in this investigation because meanwhile, police do manage to get some data off Lauren's phone, like locations and messages. Cassie says they find out the last text she ever sent was on Thursday night, June 18. And it said quote, you guys coming? And who

is it to? Well, at first, police say they can't trace who the message was sent to because Lauren used an app to send it like WhatsApp or Instagram or something like that. Mm hmm. So while that was the last message sent, they do see that Lauren's phone was last used around 10 a.m. on June 19. That's when Lauren, or someone using her phone from her apartment tried to Facebook video chat with Gabby. He didn't answer. And he says that he never even got that call. Now, speaking of Gabby, he gives a couple of interviews in the first few months of Lauren's disappearance. In July, he tells Wink News reporter Danielle Garcia that he doesn't think Lauren left voluntarily because she didn't take her clothes or toiletries.

He also tells the reporter quote, I'm worried. I'm worried and scared. Not scared because I didn't do anything, but I'm just worried something really did happen. End quote. That's kind of a interesting statement. Yeah, I don't. It's yeah, there's like a lot to unpack or like read into potentially when he says he has a theory of what might have happened. He thinks that Lauren went out with a friend and that friend quote, got her all messed up on drugs. And I don't know what after that. End quote. In August, he tells NBC two news that he's been cooperating with investigators and that he passed a polygraph test. He says he has nothing to do with Lauren's disappearance and that he hasn't been able to take down

any pictures of her in his apartment that they shared, hoping that she's still alive for her daughter's sake. At this point, he also has another theory to share. He thinks that Lauren might have been looking for another apartment for the two of them. And that quote, maybe someone took advantage of that and that was it and never came back. End quote. Okay. So those are two pretty different theories. Yeah. I mean, he either believes she was drugged by someone or that someone showing her a new apartment did something to her. Well, put all of that aside. What's interesting to me is that they weren't even living together anymore at the time that Lauren went missing. That's right. I mean, he obviously stayed

there sometimes and he had like a spare key that I mentioned, which was actually with her mom and Victor, but his name wasn't on the lease and he used a different address when he filed the missing persons report to even report her missing. Now, obviously police always need to look hard at a significant other in cases like this. And that's especially true here because there are allegations of domestic violence. Now, Gabby has never been charged with domestic violence in relation to Lauren, but he has been arrested for it in the past. According to records from the Lee County court, he got into a fight in a parking lot of a grocery store with the woman that he was married to at the time. And even

though he tried to blame her and say that she punched him, video surveillance showed that he was the aggressor. It looks like actually there was no resolution to the case. The records say that she didn't want to provide a sworn statement against him, which we know is very common in domestic violence cases. So the charges basically were dropped. Mm hmm. Police say Gabby has been cooperative with Lauren's investigation. According to People magazine, police confirmed that Gabby passed a polygraph and has an alibi for June 19th, and they say there's no evidence linking him to Lauren's disappearance. Detective Jones told investigation discovery that police used phone records and GPS tracking to determine that Gabby was

not even in Cape Coral at all during the day on June 19th. He was working at a construction site an hour away in Marco Island. The detective also said that while he was suspicious at first of Gabby's reluctance to report Lauren missing, Gabby told him it wasn't unusual for her to be out of touch with him for a couple of days. Plus, I guess Gabby is not even the only person of interest. Detective Jones named three other people that police have been investigating in connection to Lauren's disappearance. And one of them is Carl Crow. Carl is a convicted drug dealer and has been arrested a bunch of times. In fact, he was in jail when Lauren disappeared, which means that if he was involved with her disappearance,

he had to have had help. So do we know why he was in jail? So according to the police, in April of 2020, a young woman named Kaylee Musso was found dead alongside of a road in Gator Circle, which is a neighborhood in Cape Coral. Her death was ruled an accidental overdose, but Carl was actually one of several people arrested in connection with her death. They were all arrested in May 2020. He was charged with tampering with evidence, mishandling human remains, and failure to report a death. According to Lee County court records, police found Kaylee's body wrapped in a white sheet and duct tape, and apparently there was a red folder next to her body with the name Thomas Bartley on it. No, so obviously you

go looking for Thomas Bartley, right? And police find him, they confront him, which leads to the arrest of everyone who was in the house when Kaylee overdosed, including Carl. The court records say that Carl was doing drugs with Kaylee in his room, and that later, when the group realized she was dead, they all worked together to move her body. While Carl moved drugs in a safe out of his room in case police traced her death back to the house. Ultimately, Carl pled no contest to those charges in November of 2021, which means he accepted the conviction, like it was a guilty plea, but didn't actually admit guilt. Now, according to the complicit podcast, police suspect Carl organized Lauren's disappearance while

he was in jail with the help from two of his associates who were not in jail at the time. And those two guys that are friends of Carl's, one is named Hanero Jose Rivera, who seems to just go by Jose Rivera, and Joshua Okapal, who's friends with Jose. Detective Jones told Investigation Discovery that both men have extensive criminal records and Josh is a registered sex offender. But that's not why police are suspicious of them. According to complicit, the last text Lauren sent on Thursday, June 18th, the one that said you guys coming was actually two Jose and Josh. Well, I guess they couldn't at first, or maybe that's just what they told the family at first, I don't know, but obviously this

is huge. Even more damning is that a witness told Paul that Lauren was at Josh's apartment that Thursday night, and apparently Jose was there too. Now, Lauren did make it home that night as far as we know, since Gabby says that he last saw her that following morning. But police think that Josh might have been the last person to see Lauren. Josh lives near her apartment, and according to Detective Jones, he told police that he saw her on June 19th, around 10am, walking in front of his apartment complex. He says that they just said hi to each other. Now, all three of those men, Carl, Jose and Josh, are in custody as of late November 2021. Carl and Jose are in for drug trafficking charges and Josh for

violating his probation. It's also worth noting that Cassie says police have also questioned their mother's boyfriend Victor multiple times. I'm not sure if this was before or after the cadaver dogs alerted on the van in the curtain, but something else that I think is bizarre, it's worth noting, is something that happened not long after that search. According to complicit, I guess Victor had gotten a text from one of those spam numbers or whatever. He texts back the spam number, a photo of Lauren, her sister Lindsay and Lindsay's daughter. And then he shows this message to Lauren's brother and is like, hey, check out this text I got. I think someone's threatening us. What? Yeah, it's strange because Lauren's

brother could easily tell from just looking at the phone that Victor is the one who actually sent the photo to the spam number, not the other way around. I guess he was trying to play it off like someone sent me this picture of them. But like how text messages work as you can see who's like, what's from who, right? It's so weird. That's super strange. Yeah, I'm not sure what Victor told police. And as far as I could tell, like he's never really addressed that or even been confronted directly about any involvement. Again, I know he's talked to police, but none of that has been made public. Though he did do an interview with the complicit podcast. And in that interview, he talked about Lauren and Gabby's relationship.

And he says that Gabby told him Lauren had relapsed and was using drugs again, which he said was the reason for a lot of their arguments. And had she actually relapsed? Well, her family doesn't think so. Paul says that Lauren was always super open with him about her drug use. Like even when she was ashamed of doing it, she would still admit it to him. Well, and when she had talk screenings when she had been admitted to the hospital, nothing had shown up there, right? Right. So I guess like in my mind, if this is true, which not a lot of people seem to think it is, she would have had to have relapsed like literally the day she went missing. Victor said that Gabby told him that he and Lauren

had a long talk on the night of June 18. And they decided to try and work things out. Gabby never mentioned anything about Lauren going out that night. And when Gabby and Victor went to work that Friday morning on the 19th, Gabby told him that everything was good. The two of them worked a double shift, so they didn't get home until like 9pm. And Gabby took the work van over to Lauren's to spend the night. But the next day when Gabby picked Victor up for work, he told him that Lauren hadn't come home the night before and that she was probably out getting high and he was done with the relationship. But then why did Gabby call Paul that night to say he was concerned?

I don't know. But Victor says that he doesn't think Gabby had anything to do with her disappearance. He also told the podcast that he wasn't sure why the cadaver dogs had come to his house, except that he had a cat that died there at some point. Although from what I read about the training process, cadaver dogs are taught to distinguish between human and animal remains. So I don't know. The final thought that Victor has is that he thinks Lauren might still actually be alive. But he actually throws up the idea that she might be a possible victim of sex trafficking. So what about the father of Lauren's daughter, Mikayla? Was was he ever considered a suspect?

Paul says that he did consider that Lauren's daughter's father could have been involved, but police checked him out and said that it wasn't him. And that's really all I know. Like I don't know the details of like what police found or how they ruled him out. But there was also another guy that Paul mentioned, a customer at the Taco Bell that Lauren was working at. I guess this guy is named Sandy and he came in all the time when she was working and would ask her out. And she repeatedly told him that she wasn't interested. But what's really interesting about him is that I guess he stopped coming into the Taco Bell once Lauren went missing. But before her disappearance was reported to police. And for what feels

like so many strong possibilities in this case, or at least strong avenues of investigation that the police can follow, still no arrests have been made. A few months after Lauren disappeared, the family suffered another tragedy when her mom Laura died. She contracted COVID while she was in the hospital fighting other infections. But Lauren's family actually finds some of the circumstances of her death suspicious. Like Paul says that while Laura was in the hospital, the family held a fundraiser, a bike run for Lauren. And the same day, October 3rd, someone went to visit Laura in the hospital claiming to be Lauren's sister Lindsay. But Lindsay was at the fundraiser so it couldn't

have been her who went to the hospital. What? Yeah. Now Laura deteriorated after that and died on October 15th, 2020. And are the police looking into this at all? Like that seems super sketchy. I don't know. It's weird though, like something that's just a little unsettling. The one year anniversary of Lauren's disappearance came and went. In October of 2021, the family thought that they might actually get some answers when human remains are found in nearby North Fort Myers. The Lee County Sheriff's Office said that it was possible that the remains were Lauren's. But after checking dental records, they determined that the remains were of a 36 year old woman named Breonna Tennant. According to Wink News, Breonna

had never even been reported missing. Now Lauren's case has gotten a lot of exposure. Dr. Phil even did a segment on her recently. Her family says that support from the community and the media has just been overwhelming. It's what's kept them going as they wait and hope with all their hearts for a resolution. You know what the worst part is, is they're not knowing. You know, there's no closure. I will never stop until I find out what happened. When I get to get justice for her, I'll never stop. That's what keeps me up most nights. Paul is actually the one who reached out to us about his daughter's disappearance, just wanting to get the word out as much as possible. And we hope this helps in some way. At the

time she went missing, Lauren was 29 years old. She was five feet tall, about 110 pounds. She's white and has light brown hair, dyed blonde with brown roots and brown eyes. She has several tattoos, including the word Namaste on her right side, a symbol on her wrist and an NY symbol on her pelvis. And she also has rosary beads tattooed on her ankle. We're going to put these numbers in our blog post for the episode. But if anyone has any information about Lauren, you can call the Cape Coral Police Department at 239-574-3223, or you can call Crime Stoppers anonymously at 1-800-780-TIPS. When you do, please reference the case number 20-011-323. There is a reward of up to $8,000 for information of her whereabouts. Now, Paul

isn't the only family member of a victim who's reached out to us recently. Another person reached out, actually a fan of the show, to tell us about her mother's disappearance, which also happened in Florida. And we wanted to make sure that her story was heard too. So this Monday we're giving you a bonus mini-episode that you can listen to right now. If you or someone you know is a victim of domestic violence, help is available. The number for the National Domestic Violence Hotline is right in our show notes. It's 1-800-799-SAFE. You can visit crimejunkiepodcast.com to check out photos, documents, and source material for this week's episode. And be sure to follow us on Instagram at CrimeJunkie Podcast. And

we'll be back next week with another brand new episode. CrimeJunkie is an audio chuck production. So, what do you think Chuck? Do you approve?