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- [00:00]
A
March 28, 2021. Seminole County 911. What's the address of emergency? There's a lady been hit almost in front of my house. She's just beside the highway. Did he tell you if she was breathing or she was alive? She's. She's received. Okay. She. She's not breathing or anything?
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B
No.
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No, she's deceased.
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A young mother found lifeless on the shoulder of a rural Oklahoma highway.
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The OSBI and Seminole County Sheriff's Office says Faith Ely was found dead along the road in Seminole County Sunday night.
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B
Authorities called it a hit and run, the car vanishing into the darkness of the night. No witnesses, no evidence, no leads. We don't have any answers.
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C
And it's already been almost 365 days.
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B
But what if there was no car? What if it wasn't a hit and run at all?
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D
I feel like the only way for me to let go of anything is to let go of the truth. I feel like she killed herself because of our relationship.
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B
Could a family be hiding a deadly secret? One that holds the truth about what really happened to Faith Ely that night?
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D
Faith did not kill herself, and Faith was not hit by a vehicle. Faith was killed at that house.
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B
This is blunt force trauma. The death of Faith Ely.
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D
I loved Faith. I loved her with everything in me. I fought and I fought and I fought.
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B
A new investigative true crime podcast from echo space, premiering March 2026. Wherever you get your podcasts, our time
- [01:42]
D
on this planet is a puff of smoke. Eternity is a long time, my friend. Where do you want to spend it?
- [01:56]
B
Hey. Among the missing listeners. Before we dive into today's episode, I wanted to let you know that this episode ended up being so much bigger than we expected. So much so that we actually had to split it into three parts. In this episode, we're going to run through the timeline from Susan Park's perspective in a whole lot of detail. In the next episode, I do love you. We analyze Susan and Elaine's communications in the months leading up to Elaine's disappearance. And in part three, Murder Dogs, we look at the case against Susan and break down what makes sense and what doesn't. I've also got some super exciting news to share. First up, among the Missing is officially returning for a second season later this year. We're going to continue digging into Elaine's case until we get the answers we've all been looking for. And believe me, when I say is still an enormous amount left to break down, uncover, and investigate. As you know, I've been juggling the investigation and the production at the same time, and that approach has caused a little frustration at times because of the impact of the show's release schedule. So for season two, we're going to change things up a little. Instead of building the episodes while actively investigating, we won't begin releasing the season until most of the episodes are already finished. It means a longer break between seasons, but it also means you'll get a reliable, consistent weekly rollout once we're back. Secondly, as you've probably already deduced from the trailer at the top of this episode, later this month we're launching a brand new investigative podcast called Blunt Force Trauma, which takes a deep dive into the tragic and deeply unsettling death of a young mother in rural Oklahoma. On the night of March 28, 2021, the body of Faith Ely was found on the dark shoulder of Highway 56, just south of Wewoka. At first, authorities treated it as a simple hit and run, but once you start pulling at the threads of that explanation, even gently, it unravels quickly, and what's left is a case full of contradictions, troubling decisions, and the sense that there is something simmering just below the surface. I've been working closely with Faith's family and what we've uncovered is pretty mind blowing. The twists and turns in Faith's case, both on the night she died and in the way the investigation unfolded, rival the layers we face in Elaine's case. And finally, I've also got something for those of you who ask why I don't cover cases on this side of the globe. There are a whole lot of reasons why it makes more sense to work on cases in the us, most of which come down to public access of information. But I recognise that there are a huge number of missing persons and unsolved homicide cases right here that also deserve attention, and I want to try and do whatever I can to raise the profile or at least continue to ring the bell for those cases too. So later this year we're also launching a new episodic show called the Devil's down under, which will explore some of the most devastating cases Australia and New Zealand has ever seen, beginning with the horrific unsolved murder of Christie Bentley in the small town of Ashburton in the south island of New Zealand. If you're keen to keep across either or both of our new shows, please jump on over and follow Blunt Force Trauma and the Devil's down under on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you listen to your podcasts. There's one more thing I want to let you know before you listen to this episode, and that is this Susan park and I no longer speak. I wish I could tell you why, but the reality is I can't. At some point she just stopped responding. It was well before our episode on Divine was released, so it didn't have anything to do with the way that episode ended. And there was no major event leading up to it. Nothing I can hang my hat on to say. I must have upset her or given her the wrong impression. It's just a case that one day she was responding and the next she just wasn't. And look, that's completely her prerogative. She doesn't owe me anything and I don't begrudge her making that decision. I wish it wasn't the case, but I absolutely respect her choice. And while I've sent her a few messages since then trying to reopen communications, I'll leave her now to try and find her peace in whatever form that takes. To be clear, I generally wouldn't have shared this information, but I felt it necessary to do so because there are still some things that don't make sense to me. And because of this disconnection, unfortunately I don't have all the answers. I'm sure if we were still talking she'd be able to quickly and easily shed light on these things, but unfortunately it doesn't look like that's going to happen. So while there are a whole lot of things I do have answers for, there are a small number of things I can only make assumptions about. But what I can say is that they are educated assumptions based on everything I've gone through, which, trust me, is an absolutely enormous amount. Anyway, I'm rambling now, and I think I've kept you waiting more than long enough. So let's finally get into today's episode or episodes of among the Missing. There's a well known book on screenwriting by Blake Snyder called Save the Cat. It, along with Robert McGee's story, is one of the texts that gets thrown around a lot when you say, hey, I might write a screenplay. It's a bible of sorts, and it's used by some of the biggest writers in Hollywood. Save the Cat is a paradigm. It lays out, step by step, the key ingredients to writing a screenplay that hits all the right beats, that theoretically at least, will lead to box office success. It tells you how to write a screenplay in a way that leaves the general movie going population satisfied. Basically, it's a guide to writing a film that spoon feeds an audience what they want. And look, no criticism there. I've used the paradigm many times in my own writing, and it's those screenplays that have gone on to have the most success. So there's no doubt it's a reliable Bible. It does understand audience, and it does understand story structure. One of the biggest rules in Save the Cat, so bigots reflected in the title itself, is simple. You can break your story in almost any direction. You can let your protagonist fall apart, make terrible decisions, lose themselves, and claw their way back. But there's one thing you can never, ever do. You cannot kill the cat. Snyder means it in both the literal and metaphorical sense. Of course, if you want to keep your audience engaged, literally avoid killing the cat. But at its true essence, the rule is simple. You can't let your protagonist cross a moral or ethical line that will disconnect your audience entirely. You can let them wobble right on the edge of it. You can let them brush against it. But once they step over it, once they cross it, well, you lose them. And the impact of that rule in Save the Cat is somewhat ironically present in both the metaphorical and literal sense into Live and Die in la. There's a point in that podcast roughly halfway through, where the audience discovers the fate of Elaine's cats, Coco and Bandit. It turns out Susan park sent them to the pound to be put up for adoption, where things had taken a turn for the worst. Bandit was thankfully saved by Neil and Ingrid, but unfortunately, Coco had passed away within 24 hours of being dropped off. Stress related to the new environment. Apparently, in that moment, Susan had broken the golden rule in both the figurative and literal sense. She had quite literally killed the cat and at the same time crossed a moral boundary that was almost impossible for her to return from. I remember following along at the time. There was absolute shock and horror when To Live and Die in LA found a text message Susan had sent to Elaine repeating the word die multiple times, which we'll get to shortly. But when the cat died, people were outraged, and Susan's position in the villainous hall of Fame was solidified. Here's the thing. People want their stories tied up nicely. They want their protagonists to be flawed but redeemable. They don't like a mystery without an ending, or worse, an ending that doesn't honor the mystery itself. They like perfect wrapping paper and neat little bows. They don't want edges. But that's not the way things work in real life. People make mistakes. Mysteries don't have perfect endings. True life is not neat and tidy. People are never all good or all bad. We live in a shade of grey. Sometimes people sing cats to the pound without considering the consequences. Sometimes they say things or send text messages they regret for the rest of their lives. Human beings are flawed. The question is, what is the point at which your flaws tip you over the line from being primarily a good person to primarily a bad person? And where is the line between reasonable doubt and guilt without hard evidence? Those are questions I've asked myself almost every day over the past four years when it comes to Susan Park. Because, as I'll tell anyone who will listen, she's either one of the most cunning psychopaths to ever walk this earth or one of the most persecuted mothers of a missing person I've ever encountered. And right now, there's only one true fact we can unquestionably lean on. She can't possibly be both. Hi, I'm Troy Taylor and this is among the Missing. Let me borrow something from another true crime podcast. You might have heard of it. It's a little indie called Serial about the murder of Hae Min Lee. In it, host Sarah Koenig opens up by discussing memory. Specifically, she asks a bunch of teenagers if they can tell her if they remembered what they'd been doing on a random day some six weeks earlier. As you'd expect, not one of them is able to do so with any real conviction. They think they might have been doing this, and they were probably doing that. One of them used the word definitely. I was definitely at work. And then his friend goes on to say they went to the movies together that night at the same time he says he was at work. Sarah uses it as a trope to highlight just how difficult it is to lock down the specifics of what happened on a particular day at a particular time without some kind of anchor point. In the case of Hae Min Lee's murder, and specifically relating to Adnan Syed Hay's ex boyfriend at the time and the person who ended up initially being convicted for Hae's death. She uses it to highlight why Adnan isn't able to speak with any authority as to what he was doing that afternoon. The police didn't interview him until six weeks after Hae had vanished. It was back in 1999. There was very little digital footprint to look back on, help him fill in the blanks, and so it ended up being almost impossible for him to do so. But one of the things that Syriel doesn't really highlight is that the whole thing is counterintuitive to what she's actually trying to point out, because the reality is Adnan did have an anchor point. He found out about Hay's disappearance the night she disappeared, not six weeks after when the police were finally interviewing, but the very night she disappeared. And something like that. Your ex girlfriend, who you'd been madly in love with not months before, disappears. Well, that creates an anchor point, right? And yet Adnan wasn't able to recall where he was or what he was doing that afternoon. And this is where it gets interesting, because Susan park is in exactly the same boat. She's always struggled to lay out, clearly and decisively where she was on the Friday before Elaine went missing. And she too had an anchor point, because it was the very next day, the day Elaine disappeared, that Susan first called to report her missing. In the case of Adnan Syed on the back of Serial, there were hundreds of thousands of people calling for his release. But that wasn't the case for Susan. Quite the opposite, actually. So why did the public take such a starkly different view on two people who experienced the same thing on that particular issue? Lack of memory around a key event in their lives? The answer to that, of course, is context. Serial painted Adnan Syed as an innocent victim. To Live and Die in LA showed Susan in a much darker light. While it didn't go as far as to outright accuse Susan of anything, it did focus in particular on elements of Susan's life and Susan and Elaine's relationship that didn't look great for Susan. I mean, let's call a spade a spade. They looked incredibly damning for Susan. And I do get it from To Live and die in LA's perspective, I really do. If you believe in your heart of heart that this person was responsible for their daughter's disappearance, and it's pretty difficult to then make a podcast focusing on anything else. And I do believe that's the take on things for at least a few of the people involved. They wholeheartedly believe that Susan was responsible. I've taken that on board in everything I've dug into. I've spoken with a number of the key people around that investigation into Elaine's disappearance. I've looked at documents and data and images and videos. I've had detailed conversations and a whole lot of messages back and forth breaking things down. And while I can definitely understand their perspective on things and absolutely see their logic, and there are still things I can't really explain without making assumptions, I still just can't agree. The thing is, the deeper I dug into Elaine's case, and Susan's potential involvement, the more I kept coming up with elements that did the opposite of convincing me. I kept finding more context to things that I'd previously questioned. It's one of my mantras when it comes to this sort of thing. A blanket I've tried to throw over pretty much everything we've covered so far. Context is so damn important. And when you're looking for context, there's never a better place to start than a good old fashioned timeline. So after discovering the potential link between the mystery car and the model car Susan drove herself, I made the decision that the first thing I needed to do was go back and look at everything again. Every beat, every step, every date, every time from a different perspective. Susan's. So I made myself a pot of coffee so strong it could melt glass, and sat up into the early hours of the night, night after night, going back through every single thing. I had years and years of communications with Susan. Audio recordings, pictures, documents, data files, icloud backups, you name it. And so here it is, the timeline, this time from Susan's perspective, laid out as clearly and succinctly as I can.
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Close your eyes. Exhale. Feel your body relax. And let go of whatever you're carrying today. Well, I'm letting go of the worry that I wouldn't get my new contacts in time for this class. I got them delivered free from 1-800-contacts. Oh, my gosh, they're so fast. And breathe. Oh, sorry. I almost couldn't breathe when I saw the discount they gave me on my first order. Oh, sorry, not namaste. Visit 1-800-contacts.com today to save on your first order, 1-800-contacts.
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B
In early April 2016, Elaine is arrested in Manhattan beach on a charge of possessing one ounce or less of marijuana while driving her boyfriend at the time, Lolo, who was also in the car with her, is arrested for carrying an unlicensed firearm. In May of 2016, Elaine and her friend Sadie are involved in a car accident. The accident results in an insurance claim being submitted by a solicitor on Elaine's behalf. As a result, there are a number of hoops that Elaine has to jump through to see the claim approved. On July 11, 2016. On the back of Elaine missing a chiropractic appointment relating to the insurance claim, Susan sends Elaine a series of text messages. If you listen to the To Live and Die in LA podcast, you know the ones I'm talking about. They're commonly referred to as the Die Die die texts, and here's what they Fuck you, you manipulate the situation and not go to Cairo after you get what you want. Fucking shithead. You make me sick. With my high blood pressure. You make me sick. Die. Die. Die. Each time followed by a series of exclamation marks. Die. Die. Die. Die. I fucking hate that bullying ass of yours and you make me sick. Leave me alone. Die. You think there's no reason, but I have thoughts and plans behind it all and you keep messing up. You will not be able to say you are sorry after you kill me I asked Susan about these messages and the reality is she didn't have a whole lot to say about them. At the end of the day, what could she say? She acknowledged that it was on the back of a lane missing a chiropractor's appointment. She said Elaine kept pushing her to follow up on the insurance settlement, but then just kept doing things on her own without listening. And so Susan ended up getting, in her words, super upset. Obviously there is no excuse for ever addressing your child this way. Sure, you can be angry and you can snap. Sometimes being a parent is hard, but using words like die when talking to your child. The vast majority of us would agree that the this doesn't just cross a line, it pole vaults the Grand Canyon. Jumping forward a little Toward the end of November, Susan's employment comes to an end. And around the same time, Elaine resigns from her job at Dave and Buster's in North Hollywood. Less than a month later, in early December, Elaine's dad, Ray stops paying Susan child support. And if you're counting, that's a trifecta of pretty significant financial blows to the household that all happened in pretty much the same time. Throughout this time, from November through early January, Susan, under Elaine's request and undoubtedly hopeful for at least some amount of financial relief, is trying to help Elaine close out the insurance settlement. Christmas comes and goes with very little out of the ordinary, and January 2017 rolls around. For Susan, it's just another month. She spends a good amount of time looking for a new job while simultaneously project managing a landscaping and house painting project at their home in Lycra Center. When she isn't doing that, she's with Jeff, splitting her time between his place and hers. Nothing really stands out in those days, or really any of the days leading up into Elaine's disappearance. Except for one. On 25 January, at around 3pm, Susan receives a call from a number that isn't in her phone. The call lasts for less than one minute. I traced the number back and was surprised at what I found the number was tied to a drug and alcohol rehabilitation facility in a place called Tarzana. It was the Tarzana Treatment Centre. And if that name rings a bell to you, well, it should. That's the same rehab centre Susan and Rosemary Wheeler would go on to meet Michelle Westervelt at more than a year later after she reached out about her tip relating to bk, the very same clinic. If you've been following Elaine's story over the years, you'll know that Susan's timeline relating to Elaine's disappearance always starts at the same point. And it's the point we're at now. The morning of Thursday 26th January 2017, at 3.45am to be exact, Elaine calls Susan to ask for her help. After her car breaks down on the 210 and 118 freeway interchange, Elaine goes on to message Susan at 3:48am Come with a gallon of gas, please. LOL. Susan replies, okay, stay safe. And then a couple of minutes later, Elaine messages again. Hurry, I'm on a bridge. Lol. Bring gas. And Susan says okay. They message back and forth a few times, Elaine encouraging Susan to hurry and Susan telling her to stay inside the car car and make sure she isn't seen by the cops. As we know and as we've confirmed, Susan was at Jeff's house that night and they traveled together out from Sunland to the spot where Elaine had broken down with a Jerry can of gas and some jumper leads. According to Susan, they jump Elaine's car and top her tank up with enough gas to get her moving. From there, Susan says she drives Elaine's car to the gas station while Elaine rides with Jeff in his truck. They drop Elaine and her car back home and head back to Jeff's house. Later, at around 10:00am, Susan and Jeff drive to her house in La Crecentre, where they find Elaine on the couch in the living room in lingerie. She sees them coming, races into her bedroom and closes her door. At 11:09am, Susan messages Elaine to tell her she's making BLTs and asks if Elaine wants one. Elaine doesn't respond. Around midday that day or the following day, Susan can't quite remember. Susan says Jeff changes one of the tyres on Elaine's car. Apparently in addition to her battery dying and running out of gas on the freeway, somewhere along the track, she'd managed to get a flat too. And that brings us to Friday 27 January, the day Elaine travels to and spends the night at Divine's house. The Day before she disappears. We've run through this day and the communications between Elaine and Susan plenty of times, but as a quick refresher, Elaine calls Susan at 1:18pm to ask to borrow 20 bucks and follows it up with what Susan refers to as a promissory message at 1:30pm saying she'll pay it back before 6:00pm Susan goes on to transfer the money across to Elaine via QuickPay, and at exactly 6:01pm, when she hasn't been paid back, she follows up with Elaine via text message. When she gets no response, she messages Elaine at 7:36pm to chase the payment. Hello, QP$20. Now, Susan says she thinks she stayed at Jeff's place this night, but she calls them at 8:16pm and they speak for a couple of minutes. Ten minutes later, at 8:26pm, Jeff calls Susan back and they talk for another few minutes. It's impossible to determine if she did end up heading to Jeff's house later that night, but we can see that at around 8:30pm at least she wasn't at Jeff's. I asked Sadie if she noticed Susan's car in the driveway that night when she picked her curling iron and necklace up from Elaine's house, and she said no, Susan's car wasn't there. At 8.43pm, around three minutes after Elaine finally arrives at Devine's house, Susan tries to call Elaine and it appears the call goes unanswered. A minute later, Susan texts Elaine again to chase the payment, with Elaine finally replying at 9:04pm saying sorry. And in the last response she ever sent to Susan, give me until later tonight. Susan replies instantly telling Elaine to keep her word. But Elaine doesn't respond, and this brings us right around to the time the mystery car first appears in the CCTV footage from Divine's house as a refresher. At 10:18pm, the headlights of what is presumed to be the mystery car appear in the distance, halfway up the street that intersects in a T junction with Devine Street. The headlights appear to be switched off around a minute later. At 10.19pm, after Elaine has exited Divine's house and is at a car, the mystery car rolls up and circles slowly around the cul de sac before it exits the community gate. At approximately 10:20pm, passing the Uber that's coming in to collect Elaine and Divine to go to the movies. As it does. If you remember at the end of our previous episode the Video Don't Lie, you'll recall my shock at discovering that there appeared to be A match with the type of car Susan drove at the time, a Volvo S60. When I saw that, I did what I always do when I come across new information, theories or supposition. I tried to find a way to discredit it or break it. I think it's a little hangover from a previous lifetime when I was working in systems development and testing. If something breaks, it's not robust, it can't be relied on. If it doesn't break, well, it's solid, reliable. With that in mind, I took a look at everything I had around what Susan might have been doing that night. And aside from the fact that it would appear Susan and Jeff weren't together, at least not right up until 8:30pm There was one thing from To Live and Die in LA that stood out the most to me. According to Live and die in LA, at 9:54pm that night, Susan logged onto the State Department's website to check the status of a new passport application she'd submitted just a couple of weeks earlier. If you're not familiar with Los Angeles, it takes a long time to drive from La Crecenta to Calabasas. Like, a long time. According to Google Maps, it's over an hour. But Google has nothing on LA traffic. It is at least an hour and a half to make that trip. Which means that Susan would have to have been driving at the time she logged on to check the status of her passport. The other thing that jumped out at me was that Divine lived in a gated community and that gated community required a PIN code to open the gate. You can't just drive on in there at your leisure. You need to know the code. No code, no entry. Both of those points stood out as key to me. How could Susan have checked the State Department's website at the same time as driving to Devine's house? Well, it turns out technically it's possible because the last check was done on her laptop. So she may have tethered her laptop to her phone. As to the other point, well, again, it's possible Susan could have had access to the gate because Divine had actually messaged it to Elaine earlier via imessage. Back in those days, if you had access to icloud via a computer, you could access the entirety of your imessage history. It's certainly possible if Susan had access to Elaine's icloud, that Susan could have accessed it. Do I think that Susan had access to Elaine's icloud? Well, that's a much more complicated question than it may initially appear to be. I won't commit an answer on that just yet, but I'll say there are indicators that she may have. We'll swing back around to that a little later on. What I can confidently say about the mystery car without a shadow of a doubt is I just don't know if it was Susan or not. By taking Occam's Razor approach to it, it seems unlikely to me. What are the odds that she might have driven in exactly one minute before Elaine came out to her car, waited down the street until Elaine did come out of her car, and then scooped around the cul de sac and drove directly out? In my eyes, pretty slim. The mystery car has and probably will always look more like some kind of drug handover to me, albeit a very quick one. The timing just feels too coincidental. The other thing that makes me lean toward it not being Susan is simply the fact that Elaine didn't say anything about it to Divine. If they were talking about how difficult things had been at home for Elaine, as Divine says they were, and Susan's car drove past her when she was out at the car that night with its lights on and so the license plate illuminated, surely Elaine would have mentioned it to Divine. I mean, even a car that somewhat resembled Susan's, I feel would have garnered at least some kind of comment. But by all reports, Divine has never mentioned anything like that. So from my perspective, unlikely. Moving on to the day Elaine disappears, Susan calls jeff@ 10:58am and it appears he doesn't answer. She makes a series of calls to the contractors working on her yard and house painting before calling Jeff again at 12:22pm they're on the phone for four minutes before Susan tries to call Elaine for the first time that day at 1:36pm she calls twice in a row and as we know, both calls go unanswered. Susan spends 8 minutes on the phone to DIRECTV customer support at 2:03pm before calling to chat with Jeff again for 4 minutes at 3:15pm At 3:42pm Susan tries to call Elaine twice, and after that, Elaine's phone no longer rings. This is likely the call that triggered Elaine's phone to either die or for it to be switched off. At 4.40pm Jeff calls Susan and they speak for another six minutes before Susan tries Elaine again at 4.47pm While obviously we can't know what Susan and Jeff discussed in those calls, the sheer number of calls and the calls being spread out so thoroughly throughout the day obviously indicate that the two of them were not together the day that Elaine disappeared. Later that same day, Susan calls Dustin, Elaine's brother, at 4:50pm to let him know that she's worried about Elaine because she's not replying to her messages or answering her calls. After speaking with Dustin, Susan tries to call Elaine again another four times at 6:11pm, 6:50pm, 7:32pm and 8:05pm all of which time Susan say Elaine's phone didn't ring, and Elaine's phone records also reflect this. Finally, at 11:50pm Susan calls Jeff again. They speak for two minutes, and exactly two minutes after they hang up, Susan goes on to call the Crescenta Valley Sheriff Station to report Elaine missing. They advise her it's too early to make the report, Elaine's an adult, and Susan needs to wait at least 48 hours before they log it the next day, Sunday, 29 January, is a whole lot more of the same. Susan and Jeff speak at 8:19, 8:46, 4:39pm and 5:09pm and she tries Elaine at 8:23am, 10:22, 1:51pm, 2:43, 9:35, 9:39 and finally 10:15pm on Monday 30 January, Susan tries Elaine at 7:50am before going on to send Sadie a message. At 9:40 to check if she's heard from Elaine, she calls the attorney handling Elaine's insurance settlement. At 10:38am she goes on to make multiple calls to social services before speaking with Jeff at 11:39am for almost 10 minutes. Right after they hang up, Susan calls the Crescenta Valley Sheriff's Department again to report Elaine missing. As it's now been more than 48 hours, they tell her it's not their jurisdiction and to call Glendale Police Department. Jeff and Susan speak briefly a couple more times before Susan goes on to call Glendale Police Department at 12:03pm and then again at 3:23pm she contacts Glendale Police Department once more at 4:21pm and the missing person's record is officially opened. At 4:25pm an officer is dispatched to Susan's house to complete the report. In between the time the record is opened on the phone and the officer arrives at Susan's house, Susan calls Elaine's friend Sadie to discuss the last time Sadie saw Elaine and to ask about Elaine's boyfriend. They speak for about 15 minutes. At 4:55pm Ray, Elaine's father, receives the call from the reporting officer from Glendale to advise him that Elaine has been reported missing and to ask him basic questions. This is the first time Ray hears that Elaine is missing. Later that night, Susan tries Elaine again. At 9pm on Feb. 1, Susan calls Divine for the first time at 1:28pm and confirms that Elaine spent the Friday night at his house. They chat for eight minutes before he tells her to contact his mother Tonya if she has any more questions. She does so at 1:42pm and they make plans to meet at her house the next day to discuss the last time Elaine was seen. She then begins a day of serious call arounds from the Lost Hill Sheriff station to Glendale PD to Ray park at around 2pm, which is the very first time they've spoken since Elaine disappeared. She contacts a number of medical centres in the area. She goes on to call Lost Hills again, GPD multiple times, Dustin multiple times, Ray multiple times, Jeff multiple times, and Sadie again. All in all, she makes 43 calls relating to Elaine's disappearance that day. As we know. The next morning she and Jeff visit Devine and Tonya at their property in Calabasas before they head to the Lost Hills Sheriff Station. Susan calls the attorney managing Elaine's insurance claim claim again just before they arrive. And when they do, Lost Hills runs a historic ping on Elaine's phone, which gives them the general area. Elaine's phone last connected to a phone tower. The address given to Susan is 3500 and a half Corel Canyon Road, which might seem odd because, I mean, how do you have half a property and address? But just as a side note, I looked into this a little and I can confirm it's aligned with the way cell tower locations are referenced on the back of the ping data. Lost Hills sends out a couple of cars to scour the area and not long after that, at around 3:30pm, Elaine's car is located parked on PCH. Susan and Ray end up talking 12 times that day and Susan calls around to a number of places trying to retrace Elaine's steps. From Calamigos Beach Club, which is adjacent to where Elaine's car was found, to Elaine's Bank, Malibu Urgent Care, ABC News and Dustin and Sadie. An initial bloodhound search is scheduled for 3rd February. However, it's rained out, so is rescheduled to the next day. The search covers the area directly around where Elaine's car was located. The beachside, the mountainside, the trails behind the RV park and Corral Canyon Road. The search stops at the gates to Solstice Canyon and doesn't proceed up into the canyon itself. The bloodhounds don't pick up a Single trace of Elaine. Not on the beach, not in the hills, not on the trails, not in front of Solstice Canyon and not in the area where Elaine's car was found. Susan spends the next week calling around a whole lot of different places and a number of Elaine's friends before she gets a call from Rosemary Wheeler, who goes on to set up the Help Find Elaine Park Facebook page and organise searches. From this point on, Rosemary becomes Susan's right hand woman, making calls, following up leads, piecing together information. On the 20th of February, Susan and Jeff first contact Jayden Brandt, who agrees to investigating Elaine's disappearance pro bono and he goes on to kick off his investigation. They meet on 22nd February for the first time and run through the details of Elaine's disappearance. In the interim, Rosemary sets up a GoFundMe for Elaine and it receives a significant amount of contributions very quickly, totaling around 16,000. Susan's new passport is issued on 15 February 2017. On 12 March 2017, another search occurs. This is the search at which it's reported. Tonia compare Devine's mother had been screaming out looking for Daisy. About 50 to 60 volunteers, including representatives of the Malibu Search and Rescue team, Detective Krivak from the Glendale Police Department and Jayden Brandt all searched the Corral Canyon and Calabasas areas. Search and Rescue deploys a new unmanned aerial vehicle or in other words a drone to search the canyon areas that the crews cannot reach on foot. Unfortunately, no evidence is found. In late March, Elaine's auto insurance claim is finally closed out with a settlement of $5,000 reached, a third of which goes to the solicitor, a third to Elaine's doctor and the final third for Elaine. Elaine's check, which went to Susan, isn't actually issued until almost two years later in mid January 2019. At the end of March, Jayden arranges the first dog search at Susan's house in Lycra center, which appears to be a narcotics dog search. There's another dog search at Susan's house on 6 May, this time with cadaver dogs. There appears to be a little conflation of dates in the To Live and Die in LA podcast on this front, with Neil mentioning that there were two reminders that Susan had set up for herself. One that said hide it at 9am and later another that said put back Items shed at 1pm Susan's explanation for these notes is that she found weed in Elaine's room and didn't want the dogs to get confused. So she hid it. In early June, Susan has a note in her diary saying Jeff is to put Elaine's bed in Susan's room, her desk out on the deck, and her dresser on the street, presumably so they can clean Elaine's room and prepare it for lease. Which makes sense because around this time, she's also messaging Jade and Bran about the idea of leasing out Elaine's room. Hi, Jayden. I'm at a point where I need to make a decision. I'm not ready to work and cannot afford my payments. So I need to rent out Elaine's room, my son's room, and share the living room and kitchen with all. Will that be okay to clear Elaine's room? Jayden replies, what's your time frame on renting the room? Susan says she's looking to do it within the next month or so. So Jayden asks if he can take the opportunity to go through it one more time and take some additional photos. Susan says yes and asks if she should raise it with the Malibu crew, and Jayden tells her that shouldn't be an issue. When the conversation moves over to the Malibu crew, Neil says, hey, Susan, thanks for looping us in. I haven't seen Elaine's room yet, so please don't clean or touch further till I can come over with the Magnificent Four or five in the next week. Then you can prepare her and Dustin's room to rent. Let me know if this works for you. Eventually, they come to an agreement for the Malibu crew to actually lease Elaine's room, and they shift in there on 15 July. On 18 June, Susan attends a meeting set up by the Malibu crew with what was described to Susan as two ex FBI agents. And here's how Susan put it when I asked her about that meeting. Then there's the strange two guys that I had to meet called Kevin. Mike had said to me to meet them in downtown at the Baltimore Hotel. They wanted me to come by myself because they said it's like top, top secret or something, undercover or something. But Jeff went with me because I got a weird feeling when I got there. They wanted Jeff to wait outside in the car. Jeff waited two hours on the street and parked. When I met these guys, they were telling me that all future GoFundMe funds on Elaine's Facebook had to go directly to Mike's account because he was going to go to a concert for Elaine. Kevin kept insisting and pushing me and pressuring me. All of my assets were questioned, almost threatening me. So that was a very, very, very Strange. Throughout the months after Elaine's disappearance, the reward fund offer fluctuated quite significantly. For a very short time, it actually sat at half a million dollars, half of which was put up by David Faustino, and the other half agreed to be matched by Susan's employer at the time. If you're as old as I am, you'll know exactly who David Faustino is. But for those of you who don't, David was a household name in the 80s and 90s. He played a character on TV called Bud Bundy on the show Married With Children, son to Ed o' Neill's Al and Katey Seagal's Peggy. In what conjures up one of the most Hollywood esque images in my mind when I think of Elaine's case, Susan went on to meet with the Malibu crew and David Faustino at Mike's house on 21 August, where they sat on his living room floor and I kid you not, counted out $250,000 in cash going on to then bundle it into a suitcase. At the beginning of January 2018, Susan attends another meeting with ex FBI agents. And this time things are a little more aggressive, according to Susan. Here's what Susan had to say about it. That's another event. It was a separate set of men at Mike's place. That was a trick on me again. Mike told me to come to his place and that this top ex FBI connection will help with Elaine and wanted to ask some questions. When Jeff and I got there, Neil and them took Jeff out for a drink and left me with these two men. I had all my folders, files, CDs, heavy box with me, all excited. Then they were interrogating me on my involvement. I was so humiliated, upset, tearing up. I've seen some of the video from this meeting and it's clear that Susan is taken aback by the directness of the guys interviewing her. They push her incredibly hard and her responses are shaky and unsure. At one point when Susan is responding to one of their questions, she says something like after Elaine D. And then she pauses. In what appears to be a pretty evident language correction, she ends the word as issappearance rather than died. A few weeks later, a vigil is held on the beach near where Elaine's car was discovered. All of the Malibu crew were in attendance, as was Delaine's brother Dustin and Jeff's son Travis. Susan and Jeff themselves didn't attend. And to be fair, knowing now how the interview with the two ex FBI agents had gone earlier in the month, I'm not certain I would have attended either. On 14 May 2018, Cellebrite managed to successfully access and extract the data from Elaine's iPhone7 handset. The data was then positioned for further extraction using Cellebrite analysis software. On 8 November 2018, Rosemary arranged for two highly skilled experts in the field of human decomposition detection. Paul Dosti, a highly experienced cadaver dog handler, and Dr. Arpad Vass, who has a doctorate in forensic anthropology and is literally the go to guy when it comes to understanding human decomposition, to come out to Los Angeles and assist in investigating Elaine's case. And just a side note, if the name Paul Dusty rings a bell to you and you're a big true crime podcast fan, it's probably because Paul and his three legged cadaver dog Buster were involved in the search for Kristen Smart, which was covered in Chris Lambert's absolutely brilliant podcast, your Own Backyard. Rosemary reached out to Susan to arrange for the search to begin at her house. However, Susan took umbrage to the fact that they wanted to start there. And so the search and Paul and Arpad's involvement in Elaine's case, never prepared, receded. I'm going to stop the timeline there. Not because there isn't more that we could go through, but at the end of the day, you've got to draw the line in the sand somewhere, and this feels like as good a place as any. What I learned over time looking into Elaine's case is that nothing is ever as simple as it may look on the surface. Everything is complex, and even with the additional context, it's still incredibly hard to fully position yourself to understand the thoughts and actions of another human being. But every little piece helps. Having the timeline in place is a good start, but without another layer of context, all we have is a series of dates and times and places and people. I realized as I pulled all this together that it's nothing without a key piece of the puzzle analyzed in conjunction with the timeline data communications When I first started compiling this timeline, I stumbled across a series of messages between Susan and Rosemary Wheeler regarding Dr. Voss and Paul Tom. Exhausty. I read through it and found myself a little shocked. It's pretty clear reading them just how Susan felt about the idea of another cadaver dog searching her house in Lycra center. And there's no doubt. I was left pondering yet again whether this was an attempt to avoid some kind of detection or simply the frustration of someone who has had the spotlight turned continually on them, someone whose daughter is missing and someone who feels like resources have been wasted and energy directed in the wrong places. I'll let you make that call. Here's a snapshot of the messages I found between Susan and Rosemary on the subject. Rosemary, tomorrow Paul and Arpad want to meet at your house. They just now told me they have time in the morning. Can you be there or can I just bring them by? I will only meet if and once they have searched Divine's house and I am working tomorrow. I am not the suspect. Of course you are not the suspect. They just want to be sure that nobody followed her home and did something while you weren't there. Rosemary, this is all your suggestion. I was home around 2:30am consecutively because I was worried about her car having problems. I would know if she was home. What has someone following her have to do with searching my house? What clues can they find in my house? A reminder that a few times dogs came around and found nothing. Only thing I can think why is if you guys think that she's in my house or something. What the heck, Susan. I am only doing what they ask. Susan. Search and focus on the last place she was seen. Yes, with your ideas and suggestions. Get over it, please. About me, please. Why do you insist and upset me constantly? Even the cops don't do this to me. The last thing I want to do is upset you. I'm just trying to get through this too. All I want to do is find Elaine and I'm at a loss here. I'm only doing what they ask of me. Susan, I would be the most important person who would want to find her. Why would you be more so than me? Just because you guys can't search Divine's compound and in cold clues you guys are focusing on me outrageously, unbelievably upsetting. Hip to hip. Please ask them to use a better time and their ability to a better use. And please don't text me regarding this. I'm not going to respond anymore. As far as I know you want me to respond so you can hopefully get something out of it. No more Rosemary. For the record, Susan, I have never once said I suspected you. You're the one saying it, not me. I've stood by your side and devoted myself to finding Elaine. Nothing more, nothing less. It's based on your actions. My actions, Susan, Suggestions and your constant scenarios toward me. Okay, Rosemary, I don't want to text anymore. Please. Your Italian blood anew is showing. Rosemary. I would never insult your race. Susan. Why would you assume it's an insult? Do you see your actions Being forcible. Please don't text me today anymore. I am very upset and hurt from you. Only bad thoughts to come from texts. Please do not text me today anymore, Rosemary. You know what, Susan? It's simple. If you have nothing to hide, there should be no worries, right? So what's the deal? Because you are not a suspect. And you're the one who constantly brings it up. Pathetic hiding. I bring it up because you are stubborn and constantly wanting to search my house over and over again. You see the ones making this situation. I'm done. You said it. See? You keep texting even though I asked you not to. All your hip to hip friends were all fake. If it was sincerely true, you wouldn't make me go through all these horrible texts. It's bad enough what I'm going through. You were the last person I trusted and I depended on. Forget it, Rosemary. Give me a real reason why it's not okay to search your house. It's where Elaine lived. It's nothing more than an exercise for the dogs. And you're absolutely off the charts with this reaction. I don't understand it. I want one reason why you won't give them a starting point. Especially since you have nothing to hide, Susan. And how many times does the dogs have to come to my house even after finding nothing? This is what's upsetting you still think and suggest it. I have nothing to hide and showed it numerous times. It's humiliating. And the last person seen with her got no search and was let go. Rosemary. I've never seen a dog at your house. Susan. Malibu Ingrid. Jayden brought dogs numerous times and Geoff is a witness. Just because you didn't see it, you want to do it again against me. Well, don't go blaming me for something I don't know anything about. Susan. What the fuck? You are insisting I have something to hide with your stubbornness. This is why I think you are behind it. Yeah, right. You are behind it. Bye, Rosemary. But the messages between Susan and Rosemary regarding the get Abbadog search weren't the only ones I stumbled across. In another folder in the icloud backup, I found exactly what I'd been looking for when I first started looking at Elaine's case. Text messages between Susan and Elaine. A whopping 90 odd pages of them from a few months before Elaine disappeared. Right up until the night before her disappearance. And I gotta tell you, what was in them absolutely blew me away. But that's next time on among the Missing. Foreign. Thanks for listening. If you're looking for more of among the Missing Jump on over and take a look at our subscription offer on either Apple Podcasts or Patreon. There's some really great content on there already, including expanded interviews and our first subscriber only bonus episode she said she want to disappear. If you know anything about what happened to Elaine or where she is, a Reward fund of $25,000 cash is still on offer. If you'd like any more information on the reward or you have any information relating to Elaine's disappearance whatsoever, please visit our website@amongthemissingpodcast.com where you can send us a message or leave us a voicemail. You can find us on Facebook, Instagram and TikTok at among themissingpodcast. If you've got any questions you'd like to be addressed in our Q and A episodes, please visit our website at among the Missing Podcast either send us a message or leave us a voicemail. Among the Missing is a production of FTM Media, produced by Troy Taylor, Mark Tarulli and Fred Scherzer, written by Troy Taylor. Our theme song is Lucid Symphony by Dirty Freaks. Elaine park is still a missing person and her case is still open with the Glendale Police Department. If you have any information about her whereabouts, please contact them on 818-548-3135 and mention Elaine's case number 171512.