The Vanishing of Emily Carter – Part 2

Months passed, but the investigation refused to slow down. Detectives continued reviewing every piece of evidence, hoping they had missed something during the early days of the case. Every witness statement was examined again, every surveillance recording was enhanced with improved technology, and every anonymous tip was carefully investigated. Yet the mystery surrounding Emily Carter’s disappearance remained unsolved.

One cold winter morning, investigators received an unexpected phone call from a truck driver traveling through a remote highway nearly seventy miles from Maple Creek. He reported seeing an abandoned backpack hidden behind thick bushes near a deserted rest area. Since Emily had vanished only a few months earlier, police immediately secured the location and sent forensic specialists to examine the scene.

The backpack contained school notebooks, a small flashlight, and an empty water bottle. At first glance, it looked promising. However, after careful laboratory testing, investigators confirmed that none of the items belonged to Emily. Although the discovery was disappointing, officers remained determined. Every lead, no matter how small, deserved attention.

Meanwhile, Emily’s parents continued their search in a different way. They created a website dedicated to missing person awareness and shared Emily’s story with thousands of people across the country. Volunteers from different states began organizing awareness events, hoping someone would recognize her photograph or remember an overlooked detail.

Social media played a major role in keeping the case alive. Every anniversary of Emily’s disappearance brought renewed public attention. Thousands of people shared her picture, while online communities discussed possible theories. Some believed she had left voluntarily, while others suspected foul play. Investigators reminded the public that speculation could never replace real evidence.

Several months later, detectives received another important lead. A woman living in another state claimed she had met a young girl who strongly resembled Emily. According to her statement, the girl appeared nervous and avoided answering personal questions. Investigators immediately traveled to interview the witness and review nearby surveillance footage.

Although the investigation initially created excitement, the woman later admitted she could not be completely certain of the girl’s identity. Facial comparison experts concluded that the individual in the footage was not Emily. Once again, hope faded, but investigators refused to close the case.

Advances in forensic technology gave detectives another opportunity. Modern software was used to enhance the old convenience store surveillance footage. Experts managed to improve several frames showing the dark-colored SUV that had been seen near Emily shortly before she disappeared.

While the license plate remained unreadable, investigators discovered one important detail. The vehicle had a rare roof rack design that matched only a limited number of SUV models produced during that year. Police contacted dealerships, repair shops, and vehicle registration offices across several states, searching for owners whose vehicles matched the description.

Thousands of records were reviewed. Hundreds of vehicle owners were interviewed. Unfortunately, none could be directly connected to Emily’s disappearance.

The investigation entered its second year without any confirmed sightings. Detectives admitted publicly that they faced one of the most difficult cases of their careers. Despite the lack of physical evidence, they continued believing that someone, somewhere, knew what had happened that night.

Emily’s parents never removed her bedroom decorations. Every birthday they placed a small cake on the dining table, hoping that one day she might return home. Friends who had once attended school with Emily had now graduated, started careers, and moved to different cities. Yet many still shared her story whenever the anniversary of her disappearance arrived.

Cases like Emily’s demonstrate why every small detail matters during a missing person investigation. A forgotten conversation, an unnoticed vehicle, or a single photograph can sometimes provide the breakthrough investigators have waited years to find.

To this day, Emily Carter’s disappearance remains an unsolved mystery. Although this story is fictional, it reflects the challenges investigators and families often face in real missing person cases. Every unresolved case serves as a reminder that hope should never disappear, because many mysteries have been solved years—even decade

Hello everyone, and welcome back to Scary Interesting. In this video, we’re going to go over two disappearances that simply don’t make sense.
0:077 secondsThese are the types of stories that will make your head hurt because they’re just so strange. One was even caught on video, but despite this, it’s still a complete mystery to this day.
0:1515 secondsAnd the video itself is just extremely weird. You’ll see what I mean, and as always, viewer discretion is advised.
0:2424 seconds[intro music]
0:3535 secondsLaureen Ann Rahn was born in Manchester, New Hampshire on April 3rd, 1966. We don’t know much about her childhood, but her parents divorced when she was still an infant.
0:4444 secondsLaureen also didn’t have much contact with her father growing up, and she and her mother, Judith, moved to Miami, Florida when she was just 4 years old, because after the divorce, her mother wanted a fresh start.
0:5454 secondsThings unfortunately didn’t work out like she planned, and she and Laureen would end up moving back to Manchester in 1976.
1:001 minuteBy 4 years later, in 1980, they lived on a third-floor apartment, and Laureen attended junior high a few blocks away.
1:061 minute, 6 secondsAnd despite the somewhat inconsistent home life, what was constant throughout Laureen’s life was that she was a dreamer and a free spirit, and she absolutely loved singing and dancing.
1:141 minute, 14 secondsShe often even told her closest friends that she wanted to run away and make it big as an actress and performer.
1:191 minute, 19 secondsShe was also close to her mother, too, but like many people her age, unbeknownst to her mother, Laureen began drinking and smoking while she was still in junior high.
1:271 minute, 27 secondsBy the spring of 1980, her mother Judith was dating a professional tennis player. And as she often did, she planned to accompany him to an out-of-town match over the weekend on Saturday, April 26.
1:371 minute, 37 secondsLaureen usually went with her mother when she traveled with her boyfriend, but that weekend she was on spring break, and she begged her mother to let her stay in the apartment by herself.
1:441 minute, 44 secondsJudith hemmed and hawed about this but eventually agreed.
1:471 minute, 47 secondsAfter all, it was only a few weeks before Laureen’s 14th birthday, and she planned on getting back to Manchester early on in the morning of Sunday, April 27th. It would just be one night alone.
1:561 minute, 56 secondsNow, after her mother left, Laureen spent most of the day in the apartment doing chores, watching TV, and talking on the phone with her friends.
2:022 minutes, 2 secondsSeveral family members dropped by to check on her, and then that afternoon, she walked to a nearby liquor store to stock shelves.
2:082 minutes, 8 secondsLaureen didn’t actually work there, but one of her friends said she occasionally did odd jobs around the store in exchange for free drinks.
2:132 minutes, 13 secondsAnd in fact, she had a bottle of wine and a six-pack of beer when she got back to the apartment later that afternoon.
2:182 minutes, 18 secondsShortly thereafter, she called a male friend and a female friend and asked if they want to drink, hang out, and listen to music at the apartment.
2:252 minutes, 25 secondsThey were reluctant at first, but they said they’d be right over when Laureen told them her mother was out of town and that they’d have the place to themselves.
2:312 minutes, 31 secondsThe three friends then spent the next several hours talking and listening to music. Nothing really out of the ordinary. At about 12:30 AM, they heard loud voices in the hallway.
2:392 minutes, 39 secondsThey didn’t know exactly who it was, but it seems they all panicked and thought it was her mom coming home early.
2:442 minutes, 44 secondsIt seems that having a boy over late at night might get them in trouble, and her male friend either panicked and left out the back door, or Laureen told him to leave.
2:512 minutes, 51 secondsWhatever the case, the boy also apparently heard the door lock behind him. Here’s where things started to get weird.
2:572 minutes, 57 secondsAs it turns out, it wasn’t Judith and her boyfriend in the hallway after all, but either way, Laureen’s male friend was long gone by the time she realized it was a false alarm.
3:053 minutes, 5 secondsJudith and her boyfriend would end up showing up about 45 minutes later, but when they arrived, something was off. When they got there, the first thing they noticed was that the hallways on all three floors were totally dark.
3:153 minutes, 15 secondsThey initially thought the power was out, but after taking a closer look, they realized that someone had intentionally unscrewed all of the light bulbs.
3:223 minutes, 22 secondsThis was odd, but not necessarily alarming just yet.
3:253 minutes, 25 secondsThey initially suspected it was some sort of prank or something, but then when they got to the apartment, they were surprised to find that the front door was unlocked.
3:323 minutes, 32 secondsJudith’s boyfriend then immediately went to the back of the apartment while she walked to Laureen’s bedroom. At that point, she just wanted to make sure her daughter was okay and maybe to admonish her for being so careless.
3:423 minutes, 42 secondsFrom the doorway, she saw a dark figure sleeping in her bed. Then, moments later, her boyfriend walked down the hallway and told her that the back door was open.
3:503 minutes, 50 secondsBy then, Judith was more confused and a little annoyed about the unscrewed light bulbs and the open and unlocked doors.
3:553 minutes, 55 secondsSo, to get to the bottom of it, she went into Laureen’s bedroom to ask her what was going on.
4:004 minutesAt that moment, she realized the room smelled like alcohol and that the young woman in Laureen’s bed was actually her friend.
4:064 minutes, 6 secondsThe friend would then go on to say that she and Laureen fell asleep together there sometime between 12:30 and 1:00 AM, but for some reason, Laureen took a pillow and blanket and went to sleep on the living room couch shortly after.
4:154 minutes, 15 secondsThis was obviously even more alarming because Laureen clearly wasn’t on the couch or anywhere else in the apartment.
4:214 minutes, 21 secondsThere weren’t any signs of a struggle or a break-in, and it didn’t look like anything of value had been taken, but panic slowly began to creep into Judith.
4:274 minutes, 27 secondsLaureen’s friend said that she was wearing jeans, a blue plaid blouse, and a light color V-neck sweater earlier in the evening, which were still missing, but oddly, Judith found her purse and her shoes next to the living room couch.
4:384 minutes, 38 secondsJudith then got even more panicked and began repeatedly asking the girl what happened and who else was there that night.
4:444 minutes, 44 secondsThe friend eventually told her about the boy who’d been there, but other than that, she said she was too intoxicated to remember anything. By then, Judith was fully panicking.
4:514 minutes, 51 secondsHer boyfriend did his best to calm her down and suggested that she start calling friends and family members to see if Laureen was with any of them.
4:574 minutes, 57 secondsShe wasn’t, so Judith and her boyfriend eventually got back into the car and drove around town to see if Laureen had gone out for a walk or passed out somewhere. But again, they didn’t find anything.
5:055 minutes, 5 secondsSo, by 4:00 AM, Judith flagged down a police officer and told him that Laureen was missing. Police officers began searching for Laureen within the hour.
5:125 minutes, 12 secondsAnd later that morning, investigators interviewed dozens of friends, family members, and neighbors to see if anyone knew anything. Investigators quickly cleared the two friends who were with Laureen that night.
5:215 minutes, 21 secondsBut after hours and hours of interviews, the only thing they came up with was that she regularly told her friends was she wanted to run away.
5:275 minutes, 27 secondsOfficers also visited a number of local businesses in the hope that someone would remember seeing Laureen, but nobody had.
5:335 minutes, 33 secondsThen, just when it looked like they reached a dead end, a bus company employee told them that he sold a ticket to a girl who looked a lot like Laureen the day she disappeared.
5:415 minutes, 41 secondsOne of the company’s drivers would even claim that she was on his bus and that she got off at the terminal in Boston about 50 miles south.
5:475 minutes, 47 secondsThis was a potential gamechanger, but investigators were never able to determine if the girl was Laureen or where she went after getting off the bus.
5:545 minutes, 54 secondsIn the meantime, the next few weeks were absolutely unbearable for Laureen’s family and friends. They still hoped that the bus company angle would eventually pan out.
6:026 minutes, 2 secondsBut when investigators eventually showed the driver a more recent picture of Laureen a few weeks later, he said that the passenger in question might have been another young woman who just looked like her.
6:096 minutes, 9 secondsSo in the absence of any evidence of foul play, the authorities ultimately concluded that Laureen finally made good on her promise to run away.
6:166 minutes, 16 secondsThey then assured her mother that most runaways came back within a week or two when they realized that life on the run wasn’t as exciting or glamorous as they thought it would be.
6:246 minutes, 24 secondsThis definitely wasn’t consolation to Judith because she never believed Laureen ran away in the first place. They were just too close for her to do that without at least reaching out to let her know she was okay.
6:336 minutes, 33 secondsAnd even if Laureen had run away, her mother knew she would have taken her clothes, her purse, and her new shoes. As time went on, Judith knew that it was becoming increasingly unlikely that she’d ever see her daughter again.
6:436 minutes, 43 secondsBut then on October 1st, 1980— 5 months after her disappearance— she got a phone bill that included charges for three calls made from hotels in Santa Ana and Santa Monica, California.
6:536 minutes, 53 secondsSince she didn’t know anyone in or have a connection to California, Judith concluded that Laureen must have made the calls.
6:596 minutes, 59 secondsAnd after a little digging, she found out that the call from Santa Ana was made to a sexual assistance hotline for abused and exploited teens— many of whom were runaways.
7:077 minutes, 7 secondsJudith immediately forwarded this information to the authorities, and a detective contacted the doctor who operated the hotline shortly thereafter, but he denied knowing anything about or having any record of the call.
7:177 minutes, 17 secondsTo add to the strangness, sometime around this time, Judith began receiving mysterious phone calls, and these were extremely strange.
7:247 minutes, 24 secondsShe got most of the calls at approximately 3:45 AM, and this continued for years, but the caller never actually spoke.
7:317 minutes, 31 secondsJudith was initially sure that it was Laureen because the call frequency increased during the holiday season. And later, Laureen’s aunt also claimed that she got several calls from a young woman who asked her to speak to her son, Michael.
7:417 minutes, 41 secondsLaureen’s aunt said that the girl sounded a lot like her and that she called him Mike instead of Michael, just like she did when they were kids.
7:477 minutes, 47 secondsUnfortunately, despite all these calls, several years later, Judith would eventually need to change her phone number— at which point the calls obviously stopped altogether.
7:547 minutes, 54 secondsAnd for a time, there was no new information.
7:577 minutes, 57 secondsAnother couple years later in 1985, an investigator with an organization called Wings for Children called the doctor who ran the same hotline charged to Judith’s bill.
8:068 minutes, 6 secondsThis time, the investigator was able to get a bit more information, but found that he was sort of evasive in his answers. The man claimed that runaways and exploited teens occasionally visited the home he shared with his wife.
8:168 minutes, 16 secondsAnd he even said that one of them may have been from New Hampshire. It’s unclear why he changed his story, and his evasiveness was strange, but there wasn’t much else that could be really done.
8:258 minutes, 25 secondsThis prompted the investigator to then visit the motel in Santa Ana and Santa Monica, California the following year to see if she could turn up anything new.
8:328 minutes, 32 secondsShe would then learn that one of the motels had allegedly been used as a filming location by an infamous videographer of minors known only as Dr. Z.
8:408 minutes, 40 secondsUnfortunately, she was never able to confirm this, and the identity of the man has never been found.
8:458 minutes, 45 secondsThat same year, back in New Hampshire, a former childhood sweetheart of Laureen’s claimed that he got a mysterious call from a young woman who identified herself as Lori.
8:528 minutes, 52 secondsHe wasn’t actually home at the time of the call, but his mother relayed the information, and he was sure it had to be Lori. But, after that, the case just went cold.
9:009 minutesAs with many of these cases, there have been a number of alleged sightings over the years, but none of them had been substantive.
9:069 minutes, 6 secondsSo, what we know is that Laureen disappeared one night from her home in a short window between her friend leaving and her mom coming home. She didn’t take any of her personal belongings that we know of.
9:159 minutes, 15 secondsShe didn’t have any money that we know of. All the light bulbs in her building had been weirdly unscrewed.
9:199 minutes, 19 secondsAnd maybe most troubling, her mother receives strange phone calls for years, as well as charges from across the country linked to things that no parent ever wants to find out about their child.
9:319 minutes, 31 secondsIt was around 7:00 on the morning of January 21st, 2008, when a security guard at a Taiwan finance building showed up for work.
9:399 minutes, 39 secondsAs he entered the building, there was little reason for him to believe that this would be anything but an average day for him, but it only took a few steps inside the front door for him to make a discovery that would turn everything upside down.
9:499 minutes, 49 secondsInside one of the elevators was what looked like a neat pile of clothing on the floor— a highly odd sight for a building that prided itself on order and cleanliness.
9:569 minutes, 56 secondsThe finance building was one of the few truly modern-looking structures in the area. It was an 11-story blocky monolith that stood kind of awkwardly over the low-rise rooftops of its surroundings.
10:0610 minutes, 6 secondsIt also housed high-income families and professionals— people who kept things tidy and quiet. Nobody just left clothing in the elevator. So, perplexed, the guard approached the items.
10:1610 minutes, 16 secondsThere was one red jacket, a smaller pink one, and two pairs of shoes—both neatly placed. It was also winter, and the idea that someone had walked out barefoot, let alone with a child, was immediately disturbing.
10:2610 minutes, 26 secondsStill, accidents happened. Maybe someone moved out in a hurry during the night, and maybe they’d come back for them. That seemed like a reasonable conclusion, but something still ate at the security guard.
10:3510 minutes, 35 secondsHe then made his way to the security office and flipped on the monitors that controlled the building’s 13 surveillance feeds.
10:4110 minutes, 41 secondsAnd within minutes, he found what he was looking for— and what he found only furthered the confusion. The footage showed a woman stepping into the elevator with a little girl in her arms.
10:4910 minutes, 49 secondsShe looked frantic, like she was in a rush, but didn’t know why. As the elevator doors closed, she stripped off her red coat and then knelt to remove her daughter’s jacket, too.
10:5710 minutes, 57 secondsThen came her shoes, which she placed beside her. Meanwhile, the child just stood there, quiet and unmoving, as her mother then stared at the elevator panel for the rest of the ride.
11:0611 minutes, 6 secondsThe woman in the footage also looked agitated and confused as she stared so intently at the changing floor numbers that it was like they were almost speaking to her.
11:1311 minutes, 13 secondsWhen the elevator reached the 11th floor, she picked up the child again and stepped out. A hallway camera then caught a brief glimpse of her turning left in a hallway and then entering a stairwell.
11:2211 minutes, 22 secondsThe guard then checked the other camera feeds to see where the woman went next, but that’s when his blood slowly began to run cold.
11:2811 minutes, 28 secondsThere was no footage of the woman leaving the building with the daughter, and the only ways out of the building were well covered by the camera system.
11:3411 minutes, 34 secondsThere was also no footage of her coming back down, no footage of her on any other floor, and nothing of her leaving. All that was left were the abandoned jackets and shoes in the elevator.
11:4311 minutes, 43 secondsWhen officers from the local police department arrived at the scene, the security guard wasted no time ushering them to the footage.
11:4911 minutes, 49 secondsHe had already queued up the clip from January 20th just before 9:00 PM.
11:5311 minutes, 53 secondsThe elevator’s interior camera provided a clear view of the woman in the video, later identified as a 37-year-old named Liu.
11:5911 minutes, 59 secondsShe once again appeared in the frame3, carrying her 4-year-old daughter in her arms, and her expression was impossible not to notice.
12:0512 minutes, 5 secondsShe seemed tense and focused, and there was a hurriedness to her steps, as if she were running late for something. She didn’t pause to check her surroundings; she just moved straight to the elevator like she knew exactly where she was going.
12:1512 minutes, 15 secondsThe elevator door slid shut, and then the behavior grew stranger as she removed the jackets and shoes and set them on the floor.
12:2112 minutes, 21 secondsWhen she was done, Liu wore only a white tank top and black vest, and she was barefoot despite the winter cold.
12:2712 minutes, 27 secondsThere was also no one else in the elevator with the mother and daughter and no indication of why she was behaving this way. The child was again silent and passive, either unbothered or too young to understand what was happening.
12:3712 minutes, 37 secondsThen moments later, the pair got off on the 11th floor, turned down the hallway, and entered the stairwell.
12:4212 minutes, 42 secondsOfficers watched the footage again and again. It was deeply unsettling— not because of what they saw but because of what they didn’t.
12:4712 minutes, 47 secondsAnd just like the security guard, police found no trace of Liu or the child with her anywhere else in the building. It was like they disappeared into thin air.
12:5512 minutes, 55 secondsWithin hours, officers were coming every floor and questioning residents. The building’s architecture also made the situation even more maddening.
13:0213 minutes, 2 secondsIt had a single monitored entrance and exit, and the elevator doors were locked down with key card access between 9:00 PM and 7:00 PM a cut-off Liu had barely made.
13:1113 minutes, 11 secondsEvery floor also had its own hallway cameras, and every stairwell had defined access. There were also no back doors or easy escape routes.
13:1913 minutes, 19 secondsThis wasn’t the type of place you could just slip out unnoticed. And yet, there was no trace of Liu and her daughter. Officers then started their search at the top of the 11th floor— the last place the two were seen.
13:2913 minutes, 29 secondsOf the four possible units on the floor, only two were occupied— one by a Buddhist temple and another by a human resources agency.
13:3613 minutes, 36 secondsPolice also questioned residents on other floors, but no one had seen or heard anything.
13:4013 minutes, 40 secondsThere were no signs of any disturbance, no one heard unfamiliar sounds the night before, and there was nothing to indicate that a woman and her child had wandered through in the middle of the night.
13:4813 minutes, 48 secondsThe stairwell also led upwards to the roof and downward to the other 10 floors.
13:5213 minutes, 52 secondsOfficers would go on to sweep every level, checking utility closets, maintenance shaft, emergency stairwells—anywhere a person could potentially hide, fit, or fall.
14:0014 minutesThey looked in ventilation ducts and storage spaces above ceiling panels and under floorboards.
14:0514 minutes, 5 secondsThey then expanded their search to the surrounding blocks, hoping against hope that Liu had somehow gotten out of the building undetected— but there was no indication of that happening.
14:1414 minutes, 14 secondsHer motorcycle was also found to still be parked outside exactly where she’d left it and untouched.
14:1914 minutes, 19 secondsThe only confirmed sighting was from a teenage girl at the front of the building who saw Liu enter the lobby and approach the elevator just before 9:00 PM.
14:2614 minutes, 26 secondsNeither the girl nor Liu exchanged any words during the brief encounter. There was also no overnight security guard on duty there.
14:3214 minutes, 32 secondsSo next, after tracking down Liu’s identity, police questioned her friends and family members. And what stood out most of them was that no one could come up with a reason why Liu would have been at the finance building at all.
14:4114 minutes, 41 secondsShe didn’t have friends or family who lived in the building— not even a passing acquaintance that anyone knew of. By the end of just that first day, the case had slipped from strange to surreal.
14:5114 minutes, 51 secondsAnd with nowhere else to turn, police started looking into Liu herself. To those who knew her, Liu wasn’t the kind of person who would just vanish.
14:5814 minutes, 58 secondsShe was a mother of four and a woman whose life revolved around her children.
15:0215 minutes, 2 secondsShe came from modest beginnings in a rural part of the country, and she had been beautiful in her youth, so much so that she attracted many admirers.
15:0815 minutes, 8 secondsBut her mother arranged a marriage for her instead, pairing her with a well-off local man who owned land and had enough money to provide a stable life, at least on paper anyway.
15:1615 minutes, 16 secondsAfter marrying, Liu settled into a three-story home and took on the quiet life as a stay-at-home mother as the couple had three children rather quickly.
15:2415 minutes, 24 secondsThe man Liu was arranged to be married to, however, wasn’t some wealthy Prince Charming that saved her from a life of poverty.
15:2915 minutes, 29 secondsHe was instead allegedly violent and prone to bouts of heavy drinking and domestic rage. Her husband apparently made life at home a minefield, and eventually, Liu had enough and divorced him.
15:3915 minutes, 39 secondsThis was an act that in a conservative community like hers was met with raised eyebrows and a lot of gossip.
15:4415 minutes, 44 secondsDivorce wasn’t common there and it was an act that was looked down upon and harshly judged, but Liu couldn’t take any more of her husband’s outrageous and violent tendencies.
15:5215 minutes, 52 secondsTime passed afterward as the couple started their new lives apart, but her husband remained in the picture, hoping to earn Liu back. He swore he was a changed man, that he’d never drink again, and that he’d be a better husband.
16:0216 minutes, 2 secondsAnd so, she gave him another chance.
16:0416 minutes, 4 secondsThe couple remarried and had another daughter soon after, but it quickly became apparent that nothing had changed with Liu’s husband.
16:1016 minutes, 10 secondsBy 2008, she was, for all intents and purposes, a single parent, raising four children by herself, while her husband drifted in and out of drinking binges.
16:1816 minutes, 18 secondsHe was rarely home and often out of bars. The household income was unreliable, too, because of his drinking, and the debts were starting to stack up. The weight of all of this was starting to show, too.
16:2716 minutes, 27 secondsAnd friends and family noticed that Liu seemed off in the days before her disappearance. Not just like she was tired and stressed, but more like unstable— like something inside her head had become unmoored.
16:3616 minutes, 36 secondsShe wasn’t sleeping well, and her moods shifted unpredictably. The night she vanished, she and her husband had another one of their loud arguments over his out-of-control drinking habits.
16:4516 minutes, 45 secondsAfterward, she told her eldest daughter and her mother that she was going to visit a friend for a few days. She didn’t say who she was going to visit; just that she needed to go.
16:5216 minutes, 52 secondsShe didn’t take her ID, wallet, or cell phone; she just grabbed her youngest daughter and left. In the absence of evidence, speculation flooded in.
17:0017 minutesWith no sign of Liu or her daughter anywhere in the building or outside of it, the police were left trying to build a narrative out of fragments.
17:0617 minutes, 6 secondsOne of the earliest theories suggests that perhaps Liu, mentally fragile and overwhelmed, had taken her daughter to the rooftop with the intention of ending things.
17:1317 minutes, 13 secondsPolice quickly determined that this line of thought was hard to support, though. The rooftop was thoroughly searched, and if Liu had jumped with her daughter, someone would have found them on the ground.
17:2117 minutes, 21 secondsBut there was also no way off the roof that didn’t lead straight back through the cameras.
17:2617 minutes, 26 secondsAnother theory floated the idea that she’d had a breakdown and tried to discard her identity, hence leaving her ID, phone, and wall behind.
17:3217 minutes, 32 secondsThis, however, raised another question: if she did want to disappear, why bring her youngest daughter? This is where the whispers of a secret lover started to grow louder.
17:4017 minutes, 40 secondsMaybe Liu had been seeing someone in the building. After all, she did tell her eldest daughter and mother that she was off to stay with an unspecified friend for a few days.
17:4817 minutes, 48 secondsMaybe that friend lived in the finance building, but that theory didn’t end up holding much water either. The building’s longtime security guard had never seen Liu before, and there was no one in the building who admitted to knowing her.
17:5817 minutes, 58 secondsFriends of Liu also pushed back on the secret lover theory. Since her husband was always either at work or at bars, she was stuck at home with the children.
18:0518 minutes, 5 secondsLiu rarely had time to even leave the house, let alone begin and maintain some kind of secret affair.
18:1118 minutes, 11 secondsThe most chilling theory perhaps though was the simplest: that something happened to Liu inside that building— something no one saw or heard, and something no one has found any trace of to this day.
18:2118 minutes, 21 secondsCould she have encountered someone in that stairwell that took her and her daughter? But, again, there’s nothing on the security footage to support this.
18:2818 minutes, 28 secondsBy 2013, the story becomes something of a local legend. That year, local police decide to revisit the case in earnest.
18:3418 minutes, 34 secondsMaybe they’d miss something in the initial searches of the building in 2008, or maybe new eyes or newer technology could uncover something the original investigation didn’t.
18:4218 minutes, 42 secondsThe finance building was once again searched from top to bottom.
18:4518 minutes, 45 secondsOfficers reexamined the unoccupied units on the 11th floor and questioned residents again— some of whom had moved in long after the disappearance, but nothing changed.
18:5418 minutes, 54 secondsIn the end, the reinvestigation turned up no fresh evidence, no new leads, and no potential suspects. If anyone in the building knew something, they weren’t talking.
19:0319 minutes, 3 secondsIf there was a secret path or a flaw in the surveillance coverage, it had evaded not just one thorough search, but two, 5 years apart.
19:1019 minutes, 10 secondsAlmost two decades have passed since Liu and her daughter stepped into that elevator and vanished. And all that remains is a handful of unsettling images burned into the memories of those who have watched the footage.
19:2019 minutes, 20 secondsIn a building filled with security cameras surrounded by people and designed to be secure, a mother and her child simply disappeared.
19:2819 minutes, 28 secondsIf you made it this far, thanks much for watching. I also want to say thanks for all the incredible story suggestions that you’ve all sent in.
19:3419 minutes, 34 secondsThere are so many fascinating stories that have now been covered on the channel that I never would have heard of if it weren’t for all of you.
19:4019 minutes, 40 secondsAlso, as a quick note: as the channel has grown, as you might imagine, it’s gotten harder and harder to respond to all the messages across platforms.
19:4719 minutes, 47 secondsI actually tried for a long time to respond to everything, but it’s just become too difficult to keep track of everyone, so I’m sorry if you sent something in and didn’t get a response.
19:5519 minutes, 55 secondsWith that said, though, the current best way to submit a story is through the story suggestion form in the description. And if you have any other general questions, sending me an email is the best way to get in contact.
20:0520 minutes, 5 secondsBut anyways, thanks again, and hopefully, I will see you in the next one.