Around noon on July 16, 1996, a 36-year-old writer named Susan Walsh told her family that she was going to run out to the pay phone down the block and make a call. She left behind her purse. She left behind her beeper. She left behind her medication and even her cigarettes.

No one ever saw her again.

Susan wasn’t just anyone who vanished. She was a journalist who wrote about things like the Russian mob’s grip on the go-go bars where she herself had danced, and the strange world of people in New York City who called themselves vampires. So when she disappeared, there was no shortage of lurid headlines and theories. Maybe she got too close to the wrong story. Maybe it was the vampires. Maybe it was someone much closer to home.

30 years later, we still don’t know which of those, if any, is true.

If you have any information about the disappearance of Susan Walsh, please contact the Nutley Police Department at (973) 284-4940.

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