Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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Chapter 2: What happened to Nefertiri 'Neffie' Trader on June 30, 2014?
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Our card this week is Nefertiri Neffy Trader, the Queen of Hearts from Delaware.
Chapter 3: Why did it take 19 hours for police to learn about Neffie's kidnapping?
In the early hours of June 30th, 2014, 33-year-old Neffy was kidnapped from her own front yard. In the dark, she was dragged into her car away from the townhome that she shared with her mom and three children. Even though Neffy's kidnapping was witnessed, it would be almost 19 hours before police learned that Neffy was missing.
After an investigation failed to find out what happened to Neffy, a Delaware court declared her legally dead.
Chapter 4: What did witnesses report about Neffie's abduction?
But her body has still never been found. Could the identity of Neffy's kidnapper lie with friends that she saw just hours before she vanished? Or is the suspect a convicted killer out for revenge? I'm Ashley Flowers, and this is The Deck. Nephi Trader's neighbor was awake at around 4.15 in the morning on June 30th, 2014, when he heard a woman scream.
Civilian investigator Teresa Williams of the Newcastle County Police Department told us that the sound was concerning enough that he got up and looked through his second floor window.
So he looks out his window, he sees his neighbor, and he describes her as wearing pink. And when he sees her, she's engaged in some type of verbal altercation with what he thinks is a male. And he says that he sees her car, he sees the man kind of engaging in a physical altercation, pulling her back. She gets in the driver's seat of the car. Then he sees that male.
Chapter 5: Who were the potential suspects in Neffie's case?
on top of her and then there's some type of struggle and he actually sees this male subject pick her up and put her in the back seat of the car and just the way you know when you think about somebody the way they phrase things and the way they say you know he was dragging her and then he said and i don't remember if these are exact words but then he says he picked up the body
Somebody saying that to you, you're like, something really bad happened to this lady.
We reached out to the neighbor to ask him about what he saw, but he didn't respond to our reporter's text messages or phone calls.
Whether she was dead or not, we still to this day don't know.
That's Master Corporal Joshua Smith. He's currently working with Investigator Williams on Neffy's case, and we interviewed them together.
But at that time, obviously there's, you know, when we're getting this information, there's concern for her safety at this point. This is more at this point than just a typical missing person. We have people go missing every day. The information that we're getting at this point, this is going beyond.
After the neighbor saw someone being dragged, picked up and driven off, he didn't call 911. For the next 19 hours, police were unaware of the precious time they were losing. It wasn't until Neffy's mom called to report her missing around 11 p.m. and they came out to canvas that they finally heard this neighbor's concerning story. So why didn't he call 911?
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Chapter 6: What evidence was found at Neffie's home after her disappearance?
I asked him that exact question and it was, I just didn't want to get involved with other people's business.
That was Sergeant Matthew DeSabatino, one of the original investigators.
The neighborhood itself of Saddlebroke, again, is a blue-collar, low-income, salt-of-the-earth people. Very normal, nice people. It's a one-way-in, one-way-out neighborhood. It's not uncommon for people to argue over parking spots or loud music coming from the neighbor's house. That's typical.
So for him to say he didn't want to get involved in one of those aspects would have been completely normal. Why he chose not to get involved with this when he saw somebody getting physically assaulted and kidnapped, it's beyond my comprehension. I don't know his background, I don't know his story, but he has his own reasons, whatever they are, for not telling the police.
I think if we had been, if the police had been called sooner, I think this may have had a different result. Maybe it didn't, but we would have had a better chance to locate Neffy had we been notified sooner.
Investigators talked with the neighbor several times. And even after multiple conversations, they didn't believe that he was a suspect. There was no evidence that he'd been in contact with Neffy that morning. No sign that they'd had a long-running dispute or argument. They were just two people who happened to live on the same street.
But the neighbor's firsthand account of Neffy's kidnapping was important because along with giving them confirmation of foul play, it also confirmed that it was Neffy's own car that she was driven off in, a silver 2000 Acura. So the first thing that police did was push out a bolo for the vehicle.
The best thing we know at that point in time is the sooner we get a description of the car out, the sooner we get the picture out to the media, that's the sooner we can ask the public for help.
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Chapter 7: What role did Neffy's friends play in the investigation?
So that was something real important that we did right away.
Nevi's family didn't need the neighbor sighting to know that something was very wrong. To them, there were signs. She lived at home with her mom and her three kids, and even though she'd been out at a club the night before, they expected her home by morning. In fact, what made this so concerning to them is that there had been evidence she had made at home.
They found a collection of items left on the front stoop, a loaf of bread, two cups of coffee, and an unused condom still in the wrapper. Investigator DeSabatino was there that day, and he remembers one of those pieces of evidence very well.
on the front porch stoop of her townhome was the loaf of bread that we found, and it looked like it had been stepped on. We believe it was one of the things she was buying for the children for that day. The loaf of bread is just a typical grocery store loaf of bread, nondescript. And it looked like a shoe impression had been made into it.
It wasn't enough for anything that we could actually form a cast off of and then utilize that. But it was enough to say this wasn't somebody who was just holding a loaf of bread and it got squished. It was flattened out. But that was just one more indicator that, okay, something is amiss.
Investigators would learn that Neffy had purchased the bread and the other items at a nearby 7-Eleven roughly 10 to 15 minutes before she was kidnapped.
So this is a photograph of Neffy Trader at the 7-Eleven making her purchases, and it's time stamped 4.03 a.m. So this is right prior to her abduction, prior to her arriving home that morning and after her night at the club. So in the photograph, you can see the two cups of coffee.
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Chapter 8: How did investigators attempt to use forensic evidence in Neffy's case?
You can see the loaf of bread. The condom's kind of obscured in this picture, but this is her in the pink outfit making those purchases at the 7-Eleven.
The items Neffy purchased seemed to tell a story. Two cups of coffee, one condom. It seemed like Neffy was planning to meet someone, or perhaps she was already with someone that night.
This is pure speculation, but she was at the club the night before. It's not impossible to believe she had met an individual at the club, and she was driving home, and that's the individual who drove her from the 7-Eleven to the residence. It's possible, but I can't prove that. We know from some of the items that were purchased at 7-Eleven that it is a possibility.
But I can't say definitively that's what occurred.
Unfortunately, the 7-Eleven footage doesn't clear this up. Neffy appears to be alone inside. and the outside camera fails to show how she arrived or with whom. When Felice tried talking to some of the friends that they found out Nefi had been with at the club that night, they shared nothing. I'm told the club that they'd been at was an underground, off-the-book sort of thing.
So it's possible they just didn't want to get in trouble, or maybe they simply knew nothing. But no one could tell police who Neffy was hanging out with there, who she might have left with if she was alone, her plans, or who, if anyone, had given her a ride. But people did have a lot to say about another night at a different club that might be at the center of a motive in this case.
Hi, everyone. Ashley here with some exciting news. The deck will not only land right here in your feed for you to listen to every week, but now we are also on camera for you to watch on YouTube. Now you can see the cards, the case files, and the people behind the coldest cases as I share these stories with you.
So no matter where you get your podcasts, whether you prefer to listen, to watch, or maybe both, I will be there with stories you need to hear. Join me for The Deck on YouTube. Subscribe to Audiochuck Investigates on YouTube today. Investigators told us that in the early days, there was one man who kept coming up in their interviews, a man who allegedly wanted revenge on Neffy.
According to Corporal Smith, that was Roddy Prince.
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