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Hi friends. I'm so excited to share this new Season two episode of Truer Crime with you. If you want an ad free listening experience, subscribe to Tenderfoot Plus@tenderfootplus.com or on Apple Podcast Hi friends. Before diving into today's story, I wanted to share something special with you. I recently received this review from a listener named Marissa that made my day. Celicia how have I gone all 30 years of my life uninformed about the true story of the assassination of mlk? Thank you for talking about the important things many of these cases I've heard about, but your retellings allow us to visit them through a whole new lens. Can't wait to continue listening and learning. Reviews like that remind me of exactly why I'm doing this show. Honestly, I really do love bringing you stories you already know, like our episode on mlk, like last week's two parter on the Manson murders. But you know, it's actually equally important to me to explore cases you've probably never heard of before. Stories like the one that you'll hear on today's episode. And that's actually where you come in. If you have case ideas you'd like me to cover, you can submit them through our website@TrueOrKrimePodcast.com by hitting the Recommend an Episode tab. Or you can just email us@helloruehocrimepodcast.com I'm so serious. Your suggestions really do help shape the show. And we read every message. And speaking of shaping the show, we are still working on hitting that goal of 2,000 reviews. We're making progress. We are, we are. But we've got a few hundred more to go. So it's if you're enjoying True Crime leaving a review, please, please. It helps. It makes a difference. I love the community that we've built here. I hope you love the community we've built here. And your review just helps other people find us. Whether you share something specific you learned or just how a story made you feel. Sharing really does make a difference. It means everything. So, without further ado, let's get into today's story. Please be aware that today's episode contained references to sexual assault. Please take care while listening In April of 2012, I used my ipod touch to tap out my very first tweet. I might actually go to bed at a decent hour, I'd written. An hour and a half later came a second message. When the wifi goes down and you can't play, draw something shouldn't. Bethiss the next day, I fired off a slew of new posts. So far today, I've almost destroyed a netbook, spilled on myself, and flipped a lunch tray on the table. Suchaclutz. Then later, perhaps the most telling of them all when you tweet in class and three seconds later, people from the same class talk to you about what you posted. Because they're on Twitter too. Smiley face. Listen. I was 16 and earnest. It was 2012, and if that last tweet is any indication, social media was booming. But please don't let my mundane hourly updates fool you. By 2012, Twitter had earned its reputation as the platform where social movements ignited. Alongside other social media, Twitter had been an essential tool for protesters, spreading information and sometimes even organizing action during the Arab Spring in Tunisia, Egypt, and other countries, the Green Movement in Iran and Occupy Wall street in the United States. But gaining traction on Twitter meant standing out among the chaos of tweets and trends, no small feat for any cause. And so when Canadian journalist Sheila north began tweeting, she wasn't exactly expecting an immediate groundswell of attention. Sheila, who is Indigenous, a member of the Cree Nation, had covered countless tragic stories about women from her community, women who had disappeared, women who'd been murdered. It would be hard, I think, for anyone not to feel consumed by these cases, stories that so often ended in heartbreak and frustration. Indigenous women, despite making up only 4% of Canada's population, are alarmingly overrepresented among its missing and murder victims. Yet their cases receive little attention. It's a reality that's mirrored across the Americas. For Sheila, it felt like society had deemed her community invisible. And then one day, logging into her Twitter account, she started adding the same recurring tag to her tweets, MMIWMissing and Murdered Indigenous women. Suddenly, the hashtag began to spread, at first a ripple and then a wave, as tweets poured in from across Canada, then the US Then worldwide. Each tweet a testament, a piece of a larger narrative. It surprised me at how fast the hashtag picked up and how far it went, sheila later recounted to the New Yorker offline. The momentum built as well. Families of the missing and murdered held protests and vigils, sometimes just three people in the freezing cold and other times thousands under a scorching sun. The movement, which is still ongoing, has heightened public awareness of the epidemic of missing and murdered Indigenous folks and led to a plethora of public policy initiatives across North America. But despite these strides, a grim reality persists. The association of American Indian affairs reports that more than four in five Native women have faced violence in their lifetime, and that homicide is the third leading cause of death for Native women aged 10 to 24, the fifth for those aged 25 to 34. Yet mainstream media continues to shine its spotlight predominantly on white victims, leaving Indigenous stories in the shadows. But behind every statistic, there are so many stories, lives, voices. So who are the faces behind this movement, the stories behind the numbers? Today, we'll be exploring one, because this is the story of Sonia Ivanov. I'm Cesia Stanton, and you're listening to truer crime. In the early morning hours of August 11, 2003, Timarie Tiwarek had a plan. Leave her friend's place where she just spent the night, swing by her house, get herself ready for the day, and then head over to the Aurora Inn to clock in for her shift, working the front desk. Nothing novel, just another day. But when she entered her house that morning, she was surprised to find the place empty. No signs of her roommate and best friend, Sonia Ivanov. The two had been together just the evening prior. They'd gone to a friend's house to play some board games. Pretty much the opposite of a crazy night out. Around 1am though, Timoree and Sonja had gone their separate ways. Timry, who worked in the morning, figured it was best that she crash at a friend's house, call it a night. But Sonja decided to stay out a bit longer. She had the next day off, so why not? It was raining when the two parted. Peace out, pal, they called to one another. It was their catchphrase, timrie told dateline. She watched as Sonya jumped in the rain, headed off in the general direction of their house. The two women were young, just 19, and they'd moved to Nome, Alaska, in 2002, soon after graduating high school. Nome, which sits just south of the Arctic Circle, is a small town with just under 4,000 residents. But for Timoree and Sonya, Nome felt like home. The girls who are both Alaska Native, had come from the tiny village of Unicleet 747. To them, Noh might as well have been the big city. In high school, Sonja had been an honor roll kid whose five'eleven stature made her a natural on the basketball court. The fourth of six kids, she'd grown up with her parents and siblings in a small three bedroom house. Life may have felt a bit cramped, but it was also brimming with culture. As her sister told NBC, Sonja was deeply proud of her indigenous and Alaska Native heritage. She loved all of it. The food, the dancing, the gatherings. But as much as she enjoyed it, moving away represented a chance to branch out on her own, an opportunity to build her future. And as Timmery told dateline, she was sick of the cold Alaskan winters and dreamed of going to college. So when Sonya got a job working at the admitting desk at a hospital in Nome, she started scheming. She'd save up, and then, when the time was right, she'd head to Hawaii for college. It wasn't long before Timry joined her best friend in Nome and the two got a place together. Close as ever, they shared everything. Makeup, clothes. They were two young women with everything ahead of them, basking in the opportunity to chart their own paths in a new yet familiar feeling city. And so when Timri found their home empty that day in August, it didn't spark too much worry. This was 2002, years before the age of smartphones and unlimited text messages, so Timery didn't think too much of it. Maybe Sonya had just crashed at a friend's place. She headed to work, assuming she'd hear from Sonya soon. But when she returned home from her shift to a still empty house, she decided to phone Sonia's sister and a few of their mutual friends. But each call ended the same way. No one had seen or heard from Sonja. Then Timree noticed something unsettling. Sonja's makeup bag was sitting in the same place it had been the night prior, completely undisturbed. The anxiety in her chest ratcheted up a notch. She knew it was unlike Sonya to leave the house without getting ready and putting on makeup. The next morning, unsure where else to check, Tim recalled the Nome Police Department. Maybe something had gone awry after they'd split up that night. She wondered if Sonya had somehow ended up arrested. But the call was just another dead end. Officers informed her that no, no one with that name was being held that evening. Feeling desperate and out of options, Timri walked to the police station. It had now been 41 hours since since she'd last seen her best friend. I think I was hysterically crying just because I was so scared. Timur recalled to oxygen. But police did little to assuage her fears, as she quickly realized they weren't taking her story very seriously. Are you sure she's just not out partying? They asked her. But when Sonia's boss called, the tone began to shift. Sonya, they shared, had failed to report to work that day. Before long, a search was underway and Sonia Ivanov was officially a missing person.