The Skeleton Key Chronicles

Police in Florida are looking for three people they've nicknamed the "Tomb Raiders," accused of traveling from state to state and taking family heirlooms from cemeteries.

Angela Garrett, 52, her daughter Porsche Bancroft, 32, and her boyfriend Drake Lee Milam, 33, are all from the Indianapolis area.

Investigators say the three traveled through the eastern half of the country, visiting cemeteries and getting into mausoleums and niches where cremated remains were kept. Inside some of those niches were personal belongings families had left with their loved ones, including jewelry and other keepsakes. Investigators allege those are the items the trio was after.

And they apparently traveled quite a bit. Orange County investigators have connected their travels to Oklahoma, Minnesota, Texas, Florida, Georgia, Iowa, North Carolina and as far northeast as Buffalo, New York. Authorities say the investigation now involves cemeteries in at least nine states, eight of which have been named, and Florida detectives alone are looking into about 20 cases so far. At this point investigators don't know how many people may have been affected.

If a family hasn't visited a loved one's resting place recently, they may have no reason to know that something once placed inside is no longer there. Orange County investigators are encouraging people who have left jewelry or other valuables with a loved one to check.

All three currently have warrants and are being sought by authorities. The Florida Attorney General's Office of Statewide Prosecution is handling the case, and investigators are still trying to determine just how far the alleged "Tomb Raiders" traveled.

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Back in June, I wrote about a bizarre case in Philadelphia involving missing women who had connections to the same home. At the time, police had begun digging into years of disappearances and an enormous amount of evidence recovered from the property. Two months later, this case has only gotten stranger.

The investigation centers on 44-year-old Eugene Horsch and the home at 417 West Chew Avenue in Philadelphia. Police say they've now served more than 95 search warrants involving the property and everything recovered there. The FBI has assisted with processing evidence, a K-9 team searched the property and investigators even removed part of the home's sewer line to examine what was inside.

More than 20 containers holding an unidentified substance were sent to a specialized lab in Chicago. Inside the home, investigators also recovered five urns believed to contain cremated remains, what appeared to be a small basement lab and around 50 electronic devices.

It's what police say they've found on those devices, however, that has pushed this investigation into very unusual territory. There are approximately 600,000 images and 70,000 videos, along with upwards of 70,000 pages of writings, journal entries, drawings and illustrations. Investigators have only reviewed a fraction of everything recovered. On the first hard drive they examined, police say they discovered images and videos of two women who had been missing for years. They identified them as Maribel Fresses, missing since 2018, and Gabriella Amarando, missing since 2012. Earlier recordings reportedly show the women alive, while later material appears to show them deceased.

Neither woman's remains have been recovered, and Eugene Horsch has not been charged in connection with what happened to them. But Maribel and Gabriella aren't the only missing women whose stories have become tangled up with this address.

Amy McHale disappeared in 2016 while reportedly staying at the West Chew Avenue home. Amy had previously been married to Eugene's father, R.C. Horsch, who also lived at the property and passed away last year.

R.C. himself had a pretty unusual background. He was an artist and filmmaker whose work sometimes ventured into extremely dark territory, including disturbing scenarios involving women. There is nothing establishing that his creative work had anything to do with Amy's disappearance, but his connection to Amy and the home has brought another strange layer to an already complicated case.
Then there's Blair Tonzelli, who remains missing.

Her name unexpectedly surfaced when police stopped Eugene in June and discovered that a woman traveling with him was using identification in Blair's name. Police later established that the woman was not Blair. That traffic stop ultimately became one of the pieces that brought investigators back to West Chew Avenue and opened up an investigation that now stretches across multiple disappearances and more than a decade.

And police apparently believe there may still be people out there who can help them understand what was happening at this property. Now, Philadelphia police are asking anyone who knew Eugene Horsch, had any interaction with him or ever stepped inside the West Chew Avenue home to contact investigators. Even if that interaction seemed completely unremarkable at the time, they want to hear about it.

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In June of 1973, 19-year-old Rebecca Jean “Becky” McMahan disappeared from Bell Gardens, California. Before she vanished, she had mentioned plans to vacation in Palm Springs. Seven months later, an unidentified young woman was discovered partially buried in the desert near Desert Hot Springs, just about 20 miles from Palm Springs.

But for more than 50 years, no one realized the young woman found in the desert was Rebecca. Her family had reported her missing on July 3rd, 1973, just a few weeks after she was last seen mid-June. Rebecca had moved around quite a bit in the years before she disappeared, living in Bellingham, Washington, as well as Bell, Cudahy and Commerce, California so she was known to travel around.

Meanwhile, investigators in Riverside County were trying to put a name to the young woman found in the desert. Fingerprints were compared and dental records were checked, but somehow the unidentified woman near Desert Hot Springs was never connected to the 19-year-old who had disappeared months earlier.

In 2024, the Riverside County Regional Cold Case Team took another look at the unidentified woman's case and submitted a skeletal sample for advanced DNA testing. Scientists at Othram were able to develop a DNA profile, and forensic genetic genealogy eventually led investigators to a close relative in California.

That relative voluntarily provided a DNA sample, which determined that the woman discovered near Desert Hot Springs in January 1974 was Rebecca Jean McMahan.

Investigators now know who she was, but they still don't know what happened during the seven months between Rebecca's disappearance and her discovery in the desert. To this day detectives continue to investigate the circumstances surrounding Rebecca's passing and is asking anyone who knew her or remembers anything about that period of her life to come forward.

Fifty-two years later, Rebecca finally has her name back. Now investigators are trying to find out the rest of her story.

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Nearly three years ago, 16-year-old Jarrett Brooks disappeared from his Arizona home on the Fourth of July. At first glance, it looks like the story of a teenager who may have left after getting into trouble with his parents. But start digging into this case and there is a whole other layer that makes Jarrett's disappearance considerably more complicated.

Jarrett lived in Joseph City, Arizona with his father, Brian Brooks, and his stepmother, Laura.
On July 3rd, 2023, he had gotten into a little trouble after taking a family vehicle without permission and dinging it up a bit. For this infraction, his parents grounded him.

Early the next morning, Jarrett reportedly asked his stepmother, Laura, whether his grounding applied just to driving or to everything. Apparently, it was everything. By around 6:30 a.m., Jarrett was spotted on Boyce Road, a few miles from home. That would become the last known sighting of him.

In the years since, investigators have followed hundreds of tips, looked into possible sightings and served multiple search warrants, including warrants connected to digital evidence. None of it has led them to Jarrett.

But as his disappearance began attracting more attention, people digging into the case discovered something else. Years before Jarrett disappeared, both of his parents had faced their own unusual legal troubles involving charges that quickly became part of the online conversation surrounding his disappearance. There is news coverage documenting that history, and I'll leave it in the rabbit hole for anyone who wants to dig into that part for themselves. However investigators have never publicly connected them to what happened to him.

Then in 2025, the story surrounding Jarrett's disappearance took another strange turn when Molly Kathryn Ottman, a local journalist who had actually been covering Jarrett's disappearance, was indicted over something prosecutors allege had been happening behind the scenes. According to authorities, Ottman created a Reddit account, posed as Jarrett's father and began making posts that painted an entirely different and deeply troubling picture of what might have been happening inside Jarrett's home.

But prosecutors say those posts weren't written by Jarrett's father at all. They allege Ottman created them herself and then contacted investigators to point them toward the account, claiming it belonged to him. The information was taken seriously enough that investigative resources were redirected toward looking into those claims. Ottman has denied all of the allegations and said she planned to plead not guilty.

Jarrett would be 19 years old today. He is still missing, and if you have information that could help investigators figure out what happened to him, please contact the Navajo County Sheriff's Office.

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Springboro Police released a new video today showing a man they believe could be missing local man, Justin Howell. Justin was last seen around 7:30 a.m. Tuesday, August 11th, in the area of Tamarack Trail in Springboro, Ohio, and police say he left on foot. When Justin went missing, no one knew what he was wearing at the time, which has made it more difficult to provide an exact clothing description.

Police received doorbell camera footage today from a resident on Tamarack Trail showing a man walking through the neighborhood at approximately 1:15 p.m. Tuesday. They believe the man in the video could be Justin and are trying to identify him.

If it is Justin, it could extend the timeline of his movements by nearly six hours and finally give police and the public an idea of what he was wearing when he disappeared.

And if the man in the video isn’t Justin, identifying him could still be important. He was walking through the same area that afternoon and may have seen or heard something that could help police piece together where Justin went.

Either way, anyone who recognizes the man in the video, has additional camera footage from the Tamarack Trail area on August 11th, or has information that could help locate Justin is asked to contact Springboro Police Department.

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An eagle-eyed customer at a local Sheetz convenience store recognized a missing Pennsylvania teen. But it wasn’t until the following day that she realized exactly who she had seen.

Ari Csutoras had stopped at a Sheetz along Carlisle Pike in Mechanicsburg on August 3, where she noticed 17-year-old Samantha Miscik. It wasn’t until the following day, when she came across a social media post about Samantha’s disappearance, that she realized who she had seen.

The post was created by Alicia Kozakiewicz, a survivor and internet safety advocate, who had shared information about Samantha’s disappearance, including where she had gone missing and where she was last seen.

After making the connection, Csutoras called the contact number listed on the missing-person flyer. Samantha was later located in Harrisburg and is now safe at home. Samantha’s stepmother also told Pittsburgh’s Action News 4 that Pennsylvania State Police had identified the vehicle and the man who drove the teenager to Lancaster although no further details have been released.

It's an important reminder that if something doesn't feel right, trust your instincts. If you see something, say something.

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On this day 134 years ago, Lizzie Borden was taken into custody. We know that story pretty well, so let's skip ahead to the part that gets considerably less attention, what Lizzie did after a jury acquitted her and she went home.

For starters, she upgraded. Lizzie and her sister Emma used their inheritance to buy Maplecroft, a grand seven-bedroom house in Fall River's fashionable Hill neighborhood, about as far socially as Lizzie could get from the Second Street house without actually leaving town. She also began calling herself Lizbeth, because apparently a new house called for a bit of a rebrand.

Lizbeth loved the theater, traveled and developed friendships with actors, including the famous stage actress Nance O'Neil. She entertained theatrical types at Maplecroft and lived rather more extravagantly than the conservative Fall River society around her thought appropriate. Being found not guilty, it turned out, did not guarantee an invitation back into polite society.

Then things got interesting at home. In 1905, Emma suddenly moved out of Maplecroft. The exact reason has never been established, although Lizbeth's lifestyle and her friendship with O'Neil have long been part of the speculation. Whatever happened, the break was a permanent one. The sisters, who had gone through the entire Borden ordeal side by side, never lived together again and apparently never reconciled. Emma moved to a home in Newmarket, New Hampshire, where she lived a reclusive life until her passing.

As for Lizbeth, she stayed put, living at Maplecroft for the rest of her life, right there in Fall River, where she remained a familiar and somewhat notorious local figure until she passed away in 1927.

She got the big house, the inheritance, the theater friends and the name change. Whatever Fall River thought of Lizzie Borden, Lizbeth went ahead and lived exactly as she pleased.

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Three years after a Kentucky veteran vanished, his dog tags suddenly turned up along the banks of a Wolfe County lake, sending a team of divers underwater looking for answers.
Jacob Fox was last seen outside the Marigold Apartments in Beattyville on July 1st, 2023. Very little has emerged publicly to explain what happened after he was last seen.

Then recently, something belonging to Jacob surfaced.
A man using a metal detector along the banks of Wolfe Creek Lake found dog tags bearing Jacob's name. He turned them over to police, and once authorities confirmed the connection, Wolfe County Search and Rescue was contacted. Chief John May was already familiar with Jacob's disappearance and had also seen posts asking for divers to help search.

On August 8th, crews went into Wolfe Creek Lake. Divers started around 8:30 that morning and spent hours searching beneath the surface, continuing until about mid-afternoon. They ultimately found nothing else connected to Jacob.

Officials say there is no other known evidence connecting Jacob to Wolfe Creek Lake, and the dive offered no indication of how his dog tags came to be along its banks three years after he disappeared.. For now, Jacob remains missing. If you have any information that could help investigators piece together what happened to him, please contact the Beattyville Police Department.
Jacob Fox remains missing.

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If you followed the Courtney Clenney case from the beginning, this is a pretty unexpected way for it to end. Four years after the case inside a luxury Miami high-rise first made headlines, Clenney has taken a plea deal, and she could be out in roughly two years.

Clenney, the former OnlyFans model also known online as Courtney Tailor, had been awaiting trial in connection with the 2022 case of her boyfriend, 27-year-old Christian Obumseli. The two shared an apartment at One Paraiso in Miami's Edgewater neighborhood, and as the case unfolded, so did an extraordinary amount of information about their extremely complicated relationship. There were previous calls to police, videos from the building and competing claims about what had been happening between the couple behind closed doors.

Clenney had maintained from the beginning that she acted in self-defense. Prosecutors saw the case very differently, and she had been facing a much more serious charge. Now, that trial will now never happen.

On Monday, Clenney pleaded guilty to a lesser charge and was sentenced to six years, followed by five years of probation. But Clenney has already been in custody since August 2022, meaning that with credit for time she has served, she could be out in roughly two years.

It is an unexpectedly short ending to a case that has been winding its way through the courts for four long years, especially considering how much of the story was expected to finally be examined at trial. Instead, the plea closes that door, and one of Miami's most closely watched cases of the last several years may now be nearing its conclusion.

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Police in Tacoma stumbled onto a pretty bizarre mystery this week after discovering more than 30 cats and kittens living aboard a seemingly abandoned sailboat off Owen Beach.

The Marine Services Unit was able to track down information about the boat’s owner, but attempts to make contact were unsuccessful. And even with dozens of cats roaming around inside, authorities couldn’t simply board the privately owned vessel. Tacoma Animal Control first had to obtain a search warrant.

Once that warrant was granted, officers returned Friday morning and began getting the cats off the boat. More than 30 were removed and taken into the care of Animal Control, but apparently they may not have found everybody. Officers believe there could be at least 10 more cats still tucked away in the many tiny compartments and hiding places throughout the sailboat, so they plan to return and continue searching.

The majority of the cats appeared to be well-fed, which suggests someone had been caring for them. With potentially more still hidden aboard, there are plenty of questions about how so many cats ended up living on this sailboat in the first place.

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