On the first day of summer break in 1983, 12-year-old Ann Gotlib rides her bike home through the parking lot of Bashford Manor Mall in Louisville, Kentuky, then vanishes. Her bicycle is later found outside a department store. But Ann is gone. In the days that follow, witnesses report seeing a man dragging a young girl near a field and drainage ditch not far from the mall. Police release a composite sketch. Search teams comb through woods, creeks, and shoulder-high grass. And investigators begin chasing a case built almost entirely on fragments. A goodbye in a parking lot. A possible sighting inside the mall. A mysterious phone call. A hitchhiker story that briefly changes everything. And decades later, a dead man publicly named by police as the prime suspect. In this episode, Sara Reid retraces the disappearance of Ann Gotlib, a bright 12-year-old daughter of Soviet Jewish immigrants whose case became part of a national shift in how America responds to missing children. But more than 40 years later, Ann has still never been found.

Ask this episode

“What did the council decide on item 42?” — answered with the speaker and the moment.