Chico Felitti (13:51)

Everyone has that friend who seems kind of perfect for Patty. That friend was Desiree. Until one day I texted her and she was not getting the text. So I went to Instagram. She has no Instagram anymore. And Facebook. No Facebook anymore. Desiree was gone. And there was one person who knew the answer. I am a spiritual person, a magical person, a witch. A gorgeous Brazilian influencer called Kat Taurus, but who was hiding a secret from Wondery. Based on my smash hit podcast, from Brazil comes a new series, Don't Cross Cat, about a search that led me to a mystery in a Texas suburb. I'm calling to check on the two.

Nexpo (14:36)

Missing Brazilian girls, maybe get some undercover crew there. The family are freaking out. They are locked.

Chico Felitti (14:42)

I'm Chico Felitti. You can listen to Don't Cross Cat on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts.

Nexpo (14:54)

On Monday morning, at practically the same time the homeless man is making his cryptic prophecy, something else is happening. A couple miles away across town, a young man named David Trusnick is out driving. He spots something up ahead. A teenager he knows from the neighborhood is out walking alone. The boy has long brown hair, a yellow T shirt and skurt sofa. At this point, Kurt's family hasn't seen him for over two days. Yet here he is walking around town in broad daylight. But the driver, David, doesn't know any of this. He hasn't heard about Kurt's disappearance yet. He hasn't seen any of the missing person signs. The most surprising thing about this situation is that Kurt isn't at school on a Monday morning. He's not about to rat him out, though. Instead, David pulls over to ask Kurt if he needs a ride to wherever he's headed. He never gets the chance, though, because Kurt has just noticed something across the street, an unmarked van that David has never noticed around these parts before. Curt's eyes light up when he notices it and he jogs off towards it, shouting out a name in greeting as he disappears into the vehicle. David thinks little of it and drives on. It's not until later, once he hears about Kurt's disappearance, that he realizes the importance of what he saw that morning. He is now the last person to have seen Kurt. The boy is alive, but for whatever reason, he hasn't made contact with his friends or family. When asked about the name Kurt shouted out as he jogged towards the van, David replies that it sounded something like Franco. Tuesday, October 2020 7th Day 4 Since Kurt was last seen at the house party, the phone at the Sova household rings and Kenneth snatches it up immediately. His son is still missing and desperation is starting to set in. The voice on the other end doesn't introduce itself. All it says is that it has information that the sobas need to hear. Kenneth presses the receiver tightly to his ear and asks the voice to go on. They explain that underneath the duplex where Susan's party was held, there's a basement. In this basement, there's a boy sleeping on a cot. Though the individual doesn't say it outright, the implication is clear. This is where Kurt's been for the last four nights. The family springs into action. Kenneth and Kurt's three brothers pile in the car and race over to see for themselves. It doesn't matter that the duplex's residents have accused Dorothy of harassment. This is their chance to find Curt, and they won't be denied. Kenneth doesn't knock or even alert the duplex residents upstairs. He walks straight to the basement door and kicks it down, calling Kurt's name. He and his boys rush inside. The basement is unfurnished, barren concrete with sparse light pouring in from ground level windows. There's a cot on the floor, but no Kurt. If there was a boy being kept here, by this point he's been moved, deflated. Kenneth and his sons retreat back to their car before Susan or her roommates can add braking and entering to their list of complaints against the Sovas. They return home to give Dorothy the bad news that they still have no clue where Kurt might be. This claim, however, is about to change. Later that evening, around 5:30pm Three neighborhood boys make a gruesome discovery in Newburgh Heights. They're walking past a Ravine behind the Republic Steelyards when a horrifying sight stops them in their dress. There's a body there, lying face up, wearing a yellow T shirt and no shoes. It's Kurt Sova. His body is only 500 yards away from Susan's duplex. The kids run straight to the Newburgh Heights police, a department so small that it has no forensic specialist and only one detective. They swarm to the scene. When the officers arrive, Kurt Sofa's body looks laid out almost like he was crucified. But in spite of the dramatic pose, the body is not in poor shape. Apart from a few scratches, there's little evidence of physical violence. His right shoe is lying 10ft away. The left shoe is nowhere to be found. There's no way the search party missed this ravine on Saturday. He must have been dropped here after death. The state of the body seems to confirm this. He's only been dead for 24 to 36 hours. This place is the time of death. Sometime between Sunday and Monday, the police call the Soba family to give them the news. They think they've found Kurt's body. Someone will have to come to the coroner's office to identify him. And ultimately it's Kenneth who makes the trip. They conduct the autopsy. Not long after, the medical examiner finds a bruise on Curt's cheek and additional bruises on his shins. But aside from that, no visible injuries. He wasn't shot, stabbed or injected with anything. And when they test his blood, they find that he had a blood alcohol level of 0.11. He had been drunk but had no risk of alcohol poisoning. Other drug tests turn up negative. They cannot determine how he died and his paperwork simply reads probable accident. Dorothy Silva is baffled. How could the coroner not know how he died? He was a healthy 17 year old boy with no previous medical conditions that would put him at risk. The investigation for her is merely beginning. There has to be something she's missing that'll shed light on the death of her son. What happened to Kurt between Friday and Tuesday? That gap of unaccounted for time would ultimately become the focus of Dorothy's investigation. Meanwhile, only a few blocks from her home, a new clue drops into her lap. On Thursday morning, Judy Oros is opening up the record shop. As usual, she's heard about Kurt's death and it reminds her of the chilling encounter she had with the homeless man on on Monday. How had he known that the Sova boy would turn up dead? As she's pulling out the keys to unlock her store's front door, one of the neighboring shopkeepers gets her attention. Someone's dropped off a delivery for her. It's a bouquet of flowers, and with it, a note. Judy opens it and reads. Roses are red, the sky is blue. They found him dead. And they'll find you, too. Weeks pass. Dorothy Sova's investigation is slowing to a crawl. She's gathered newspaper clippings, interview notes, maps and timelines describing her son's movements on Friday. She knows about the party. She's even heard about David Trusnik's sighting of Kurt that Monday. But none of it fits into a cohesive whole. There's still far too much missing information. And the police aren't holding up their end of the case either. At the record shop, Judy Oros had called the cops after receiving the threatening note seemingly connected to Kurt's disappearance. The police had listened to her story, even taking the homeless man in for questioning. But ultimately they wind up releasing him, dismissing him as just a crazy, harmless transient. When Dorothy hears this whole story, her frustration only increases. There's no coordination on the police side. They're treating her son's death as an accident that doesn't need investigation. With no new info coming to light, time rolls by slowly. Kurt's absence in the Sova household is a painful daily reminder. Then, in December, a curious name pops up in the local headlines. A young man named Craig H. Franco is shot dead at a gas station in Cleveland. His employers offer a $10,000 reward for any information as to the perpetrator, but no one comes forward and the killer is never found. The man's name, Franco, leads some to believe that he could have been driving the unmarked van Kurt got into the Monday after his disappearance. But there's no way to prove this. There are no apparent connections between Craig H. Franco and Kurt Sova. In February, another local news story catches the Sova's attention. One of their neighbor's kids, 13 year old Eugene Cavett, has been found in a ravine across town. The similarities with Kurt's case are undeniable. Eugene, a teenage boy from the same neighborhood, had left for school, then somehow wound up dead at the bottom of a ravine. And much like Kurt, he was missing a shoe. However, in this case, the coroner doesn't hesitate to declare the death an accident. Eugene, it's determined, fell into the ravine and drowned in the stream. Police seem confident that there's no connection between Eugene and Kern's deaths. Any similarities are merely a coincidence. Dorothy accepts their explanation. And yet a small part of her has to wonder whether some other boy from the neighborhood will be next. Almost a year later, more shocking news arrives for Dorothy. This time from her husband. Kenneth arrives home after a walk looking like he's seen a ghost. He frantically explains to Dorothy how just now a woman named Angeline Reddicks stopped him on the street. She apologized for not coming to him sooner because she has a piece of crucial information related to Kurt's disappearance. She believes she saw the men who killed Kurt. Dorothy's jaw drops. It's been ages since they've had any new leads, and this is an eyewitness account. She urges Kenneth to go on. He explains that Angelyne lives near the ravine where Kurt was found. During the initial investigation, Angelyne recalled looking out of her window and seeing two men dragging an unconscious teenage boy down the alleyway next to her house. At the time, she thought it was just a couple teens who had too much to drink. And when she heard of Kurt's death, her husband had told her to mind her own business. And so for nearly a year, Angelyne had kept this information secret from the police, from the Sovas, from everyone. But now the cat was out of the bag. Dorothy says that they have to give this new info to someone. But contacting the Newburgh Heights police force seems increasingly pointless. She's called regularly ever since Kurt's disappearance, and their only detective, Robert Karras, wants nothing to do with her. The feeling is mutual. Dorothy wants to go over his head and get a competent detective on the case. Since the Sovas live in Cleveland, she hopes that she can get a more well funded police force to look into his death. Finally, she succeeds. The Cleveland police relents to Dorothy's constant pestering, and they agree to send a detective from their department to take over the case from Detective Karras. Dorothy is elated. For the first time in as long as she can remember, she has hope. Even if they can't get justice, maybe they can at least get answers. The Cleveland PD assigns Detective Al Figler to the case. And from the moment he arrives at the Newburgh Heights police station, he can tell why Dorothy Sova wanted him to come on board. Detective Robert Karas is a difficult personality. And he doesn't seem to be particularly good at his job either. After Karas hands the Kurt Sova case file over, Detective Figler can't believe what he's saying. This so called case file is a handful of pieces of paper and four Polaroids haphazardly stuffed into a manila folder. To make matters worse, all of the Polaroids show the body on the stretcher as it was taken away. Not a single picture of how they found the body. And even more baffling, it seems Detective Karas wasn't properly following up on the developments in the case. The similarities to Eugene Kavett, the death of Craig H. Franco, Angeline Reddick's eyewitness account, none of it was being seriously investigated. It was the most amateur looking case file Figler had seen in a long time. When he asks Karas about the incomplete file, the detective just answers with a shrug. There wasn't a lot of information, Karas argues. When word of the woefully incomplete case file reaches the press, the local police chief defends his department, saying that Detective Karas did a fine job with the sparse information he had. Figler is understandably irritated by this response. If Newburgh Heights was understaffed, they should have contacted Cleveland or any other larger police department to provide aid. But there's nothing he can do to fix what's already been mishandled. He dives into the case and fortunately has plenty to work with. Because for the past year, Dorothy Sova has been tirelessly collecting all of the information Detective Karras was supposed to be gathering. Detective Al Figler winds up working this case for eight years, following up on leads that Karas didn't even consider. With Dorothy's help, he rebuilds the case file from the ground up. There are some things they'll never be able to recreate though. The original crime scene, for instance. But by pulling together info from the Cleveland PD they could build a more complete timeline and catalog of evidence. Finally, in 1990, something begins to come into focus. And Figler begins to understand the reason why Kurt's initial investigation might have been botched way back in 1981. 1999 years have passed since the death of Kurt Sofa. Detective Karras drives through the darkened streets of Newburgh Heights. Everything seems to be going wrong for him. His career is in jeopardy. He didn't expect the chief to mind the beatings, but the drugs. Someone must have ratted him out. Fury rises in his chest with nowhere to go. Up ahead, he sees a car waver. He turns on his police lights and siren. Not your lucky day, pal. When the man pulls over, he hefts a heavy flashlight and walks over to his car. Karas demands that that the man turn off the engine and get out of the car. The driver does, hands up, defensively asking what's wrong. Karas accuses the man of drunk driving. When the suspect objects, Karas demands that he hand over his case. He refuses. Karas hefts his police flashlight and clubs the man across the head. As he's stunned, Karas handcuffs him. He picked the wrong guy to talk back to. On the way to the police station, Kara stops the car behind J.L. goodman furniture. It's a desolate part of town. Ravines and empty parking lots. The perfect place for him to let off some steam. He opens the rear door as if to give the suspect a chance to run. Let's play games. The suspect, holding his hand, refuses to take the bait. Kara scoffs and slams the car door, and the two of them drive on to the police station. It wasn't until later that the suspect would realize where Karas had taken him. It was the ravine where Kurt Sova's body had been found. The unsolved death that Detective Karas has always seemed so disinterested in solving. In the years since Kurt Soba's death, it becomes abundantly clear that Newberg's only detective is a menace. The driver Karas hit with his flashlight is the fifth suspect the detective has beaten in the past three years. Compounding the charges of police brutality. Karas is found guilty of 76 counts of drug trafficking. In January of 1991, he's fired from the Newburgh Heights Police Department. The police chief who had defended the handling of the Sova case had been banned from law enforcement five months prior. As the detective's career goes down in flames, he receives an accusation from a Cuyahoga county assistant prosecutor. Did he have any hand in the death of Kurt Sova? Karas denies any involvement and afterward refuses to talk to reporters. He vanishes from the case soon after, and no tangible evidence tying him to the Sova death ever emerges. And so the uncertain question hovers over the case for years. Was he just a corrupt cop, or did he have more to hide than his drugs and taste for violence? In 2014, Dorothy Sova succumbs to a brain aneurysm. But the questions that drove her do not die with her. In 2019, there is only one member of the Sova family still alive. Kurt's older brother, Kevin. Out of nowhere, Kevin gets a call from the Newburgh Heights police chief. They're interested in reopening Kurt's case alongside criminal justice students from the nearby Tiffin University. Kevin is elated. He still has the closet full of evidence his mother left behind, and he takes it all back to Newburgh. The investigation again begins, and soon word spreads far beyond Tiffin University into the greater true crime community. Today, Kevin maintains A Facebook page and tip line to monitor for any developments. There's a $5,000 reward for anyone who can give them a new lead about Kurt's death. It's understandable why this case continues to fascinate people to this very day. We know just enough about Kurt Soba's movements to provide a timeline, but not enough to have a grasp of what happened. That fateful weekend between October 23 and October 28 haunts us with possibilities. According to the coroner, Kurt was alive for as many as three days after he vanished from Susan's party. If his friend David is to be believed, he was still active around that Monday, being driven around in a strange, unmarked van by someone called Franco. If there's a connection between the 1981 murder victim Craig H. Franco, and Kurt's death, however, it has yet to be definitively proven. The questions remain. If Kurt was out and about after Susan's party, why hadn't he checked in with his parents? Why hadn't any of his brothers heard from him? Even at his most rebellious, this was severely out of character for him. Had he been held against his will somewhere or cut off from a phone? The homeless man from the record store was able to perfectly predict how the case would turn out from a single glance. Perhaps the Cleveland PD had been too quick to dismiss this man as a lunatic. Even if he wasn't one of the killers. Perhaps he had known something that only a man living on the street would have been able to see. There are plenty of other loose ends to choose from. The two mysterious men seen dragging a teenager down an alleyway. The abandoned cot in Susan's basement, unexplained to this day. The threatening note left for Judy Oros, which may have been written by the homeless man or some unknown third party. And then there's Robert Karas, the lone detective in Newburgh Heights during the time of Kurt's death. A man who was proven to be violent and unstable, as well as tied up with drugs. If he had some connection to the crime, he was in the perfect position to destroy the trail of evidence. And for all we know, perhaps he did. Even still, it's quite likely that the real culprit is someone who was never identified. At the heart of this case is the story of an everyday teen growing more independent from from his family. His parents didn't know many of his new friends, and he was increasingly interested in spending time away from his brothers. It's this very distance that enabled him to disappear so completely from their lives. Whether someone killed him or whether he died of some drunken mishap. It's this realization that's haunted his family afterwards, none more so than his dedicated mother in her final years. Dorothy wished that she could have been closer to him, could have known his life a bit more. In any other context, this is a normal part of growing up, but in the case of Kurt Sova, it was an opportunity for the unspeakable to happen. It's a truth that all parents must eventually come to terms with. You simply can't pretend protect your kids from everything forever. Late Nights with Nexpo is created and hosted by me, Nexpo, executive produced by me, Mr. Ballin, Nick Witters and Zach Levitt. Our head of writing is Evan Allen. This episode was written by Robert Tmstra Copy editing by Luke Baratz Audio editing and sound design by Alistair Sherman Mixed and mastered by Schultz Media Research by Abigail Shumway, Camille Callahan, Evan Beamer and Stacy Wood Fact checking by Abigail Shumway Production supervision by Jeremy Bone and Cole Locasio Production coordination by Samantha Collins and Avery Siegel Artwork by Jessica Jessica Claugston Kiner and Robin Vane Theme song by Ross Bugden thank you all so much for listening to Late Nights with nextpo. I love you all and good night. You can listen to new episodes of Late Nights with Nexpo early and ad free right now by joining Wondery in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. You can also watch episodes of Late Nights with nexpo on my YouTube channel, YouTube.comnexpo before you go, tell us about yourself by completing a short survey@wondery.com survey.