Gemma Bath

Bailey Despot has been missing since late April in their hometown of Bakersfield, California.

The 21-year-old had been living at her boyfriend Matthew Queen's house.

It's believed the last time she was seen was outside his property.

Jane has been plastering the city with flyers of her daughter's face, but no one has seen the beautiful young woman with the piercing green eyes and long brown hair.

Across town, another mother is desperately searching.

Her son, Micah Holsenbake, went missing one month before Bailey.

As their parents will soon discover, the pair knew each other.

But that's not all.

There's a third victim and this man has been murdered right in between Micah and Bailey's disappearances.

It's not long before James's mother joins the other two mums and together they start to investigate.

What happened, they ask, to the Bakersfield three.

I'm Gemma Bath and you're listening to True Crime Conversations, a podcast exploring the world's most notorious crimes by speaking to the people who know the most about them.

No one wants to be the mother of a murdered child.

No one wants to be the mother of a missing child.

But in 2018, Jane Parent, Di Byrne and Cheryl Holsenbeck were part of the same club.

They were all grieving and desperately searching for answers in their adult children's cases.

Doing those two things together, as a team, they forged an unbreakable bond, a fierce sisterhood that saw them proudly claim the rallying cry, fight like a mother.

Not only did these women give the local detectives and journalists a run for their money with their investigative skills as they pieced together their children's last movements and last interactions, but they also turned their tragedy into advocacy amongst their search for answers.

They raised tens of thousands of dollars for crime-solving programs.

They met with local government officials to advocate for more funding for investigations, better technology, stronger coordination between agencies and reforms to public safety systems.