The views and opinions expressed in Cold and Missing are exclusively those of the hosts. All parties mentioned are considered innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. Cold and Missing also contains adult themes and languages. Listener discretion is advised. I'm your host, Ali McLaughlin-Sulkowski. And I'm your co-host, Eli Sulkowski. And this is Cold and Missing, where we cover cold cases and missing person cases. Hello everyone and welcome back. Welcome back everyone.
This is Ali. And I'm Eli. And we are on episode 52 of Cold and Missing. 52, alrighty. 52 episodes. That's an episode a week for a year. Amazing. Amazing. And just as a reminder, we mentioned it last episode, but we will be updating our cover art and our branding on our Instagram and across our social medias and our website. So just remember, be on the lookout for a new look next week. A new look. Alright, so episode 52. 52, should we just get into it? Let's do it.
So just as a quick content warning, this case does involve children. Today we are going to be talking about Charles and Jennifer Chia. And this takes place in October of 1989 in Reno, Nevada. But first, a little bit about Charles and Jennifer. Charles and Jennifer Chia are brother and sister and according to teachers and classmates, they were also best friends. Charles is 8 years old in 1989. And his younger sister Jennifer is 6.
Halloween was fast approaching and they already had their matching costumes picked out. Batman and Batgirl. They both were learning to play the violin and spent a lot of time together. Charles also studied taekwondo and loved to be outside. Jennifer took piano lessons and loved to draw. She also loved to dance and flourished in her tap and ballet classes. And now a timeline of events.
So just to give you an idea of where we are timing wise, on October 17, 1989, right as they were beginning to broadcast the 1989 World Series, a 6.9 earthquake hit Santa Cruz, California. The next day, Wednesday, October 18, it was a typical day for Charles and Jennifer. They lived with their mother in an apartment on Redfield Parkway in southern Reno, Nevada. Their parents were divorced and their father lived in California.
At this particular time in 1989, their grandmother was watching them as their mother was visiting family in Taiwan for two weeks, but she would be returning the following day. As the school day ended at Anderson Elementary School, around 3 p.m., Charles and Jennifer boarded the bus and headed home. Charles is tall for his age, standing at 4'6". He had short, straight, black hair and was wearing a long-sleeved white shirt, blue pants, and Adidas tennis shoes.
He had his dark blue and red striped backpack with him. Jennifer is wearing a white dress with black flowers and green shoes. She carries a blue tote bag and a Miss Piggy lunchbox. At around 3.30, they reached their bus stop and exited, headed toward their apartment building. There was only 100 feet between the bus stop and the door to the apartment complex. Charles and Jennifer will never arrive home.
At first, their grandmother assumes that their father had stopped by and had them, or perhaps they had gone to the restaurant that their mother ran, the Imperial Palace. However, by 8 o'clock, when the children hadn't returned, their grandmother called police and reported them missing. Initially, as police respond, they believe that they will be able to recover the children quickly. They reach out to the father, who says he doesn't know where the kids are.
Bloodhounds and about 30 officers swarm the apartment complex and the surrounding fields, looking for Charles and Jennifer, but there are no signs of them. The bloodhounds are unable to pick up a scent trail. By the next day, October 19, Charles and Jennifer's parents both arrive in Reno. Their father, Gordon Chia, arrived from West Covina, California, and their mother, Ann Chang, arrived back in the States from Taiwan.
It's only when she arrives that she learns that her children are missing and she's instantly a wreck. Police begin to question the father to rule out a parental abduction. Sergeant Keith Schott with the Reno Police says, quote, we're working with the parents to see who would do this to them. We have no reason to believe they ran away. Two possibilities are an out and out abduction or a family abduction, end quote.
Police begin going door to door at the apartment complex and also talk to the children that were still on the bus when Charles and Jennifer got off. Two of the children on the bus say they saw the Chia siblings enter the apartment complex. By the end of the day, police don't have any solid leads to run down. Early on Friday, October 20, the Chia children have been missing for three days now. The Reno Police asked the FBI to get involved with the case.
While the FBI interviews the family, police hand out flyers all over Reno with Charles and Jennifer's information. Secret Witness, a program in Nevada where people can remain anonymous and report tips to the police, announced a reward for any information leading to the safe return of the children. Still, as the hours dragged on, police have no leads to follow. Sergeant Keith Schott says, quote, there have been no demands and no ransom calls.
There are no family problems we're aware of, end quote. Police and the FBI continue to investigate through the weekend. On Sunday, October 22, a man calls the Imperial Palace, the restaurant the children's mother owns and operates. He demands $100,000 for the safe return of the children. One is not at the restaurant when the call comes in, but she'll start to go in every day in case the person calls again.
On Monday, October 23, five days the children have been missing, police head back to the apartment complex and search the surrounding areas for anything that may have been missed the first time. It seems like they are successful in gathering more information. Since the next day, Tuesday, October 24, police announced that they're looking for a man who was seen by witnesses standing near a pickup truck by the bus stop around the time the kids would have gotten home from school.
Police describe him as a 35-year-old Asian male, about 5'6", wearing a white polo short sleeve shirt and had distinctive round yellow tinted glasses. Police described the glasses as John Lennon style. Witnesses say they saw him leaning against an older white American-made pickup truck. Police are not calling him a suspect or even a person of interest. They just want to talk to him to see if he saw anything that afternoon. Anne is still at the Imperial Palace when the phone rings.
It's the same man. And once again, he's demanding $100,000 and he'll return the children safely. Police were quickly trying to track down where the phone call comes from, and they determine that a man named James Grooms was making the phone calls. Police show up to his home expecting to rescue Charles and Jennifer Chia, but they're not there. There are no signs that the children have ever been in his home. Police arrest him for trying to extort Anne Chang.
He'll eventually plead guilty to the crime and be sentenced to 10 years in prison. With this dead end, police have no idea where they could be and are starting to believe that Charles and Jennifer were abducted by a stranger. On Thursday, October 26th, the Chia siblings have been missing for over a week now, and their classmates are upset by the absence of them.
The school holds an open house to pass out missing flyers and buttons with Charles and Jennifer's school picture on them to help raise awareness. The students at Anderson Elementary will write over 500 letters to newspapers across the country to spread the word about their missing classmates. Police continue to work behind the scenes as the weeks drag on, but there will still be no signs of Charles or Jennifer.
On December 9th, police, after numerous interviews and at least two polygraphs of the children's father, he is eliminated as a suspect along with the rest of his family. Police do not believe this was a known abduction, but a stranger abduction. Detective Patrick Murray says, quote, our problem is that we have no idea why. The kids basically vanished. The community's involvement has been good. It helped us and we're trying to keep the public's interest up, end quote.
Ann Chang is still a wreck over her missing children. In newspapers, she begs for her two kids to be sent back to her. She says, quote, I just have two kids. Two kids are all my life, end quote. On Wednesday, July 25th, 1990, this is just over nine months that Charles and Jennifer have been missing. Some employees of Caltran turned off I-70 near Blairston, California onto a gravel and dirt highway to eat lunch. This is around 50 miles from Reno, Nevada.
One of the guys looked down an embankment and saw a human skull sticking up out of the dirt. They flagged down a California highway patrol car that was passing by to report it. Police descend on the location and find a shallow grave with two small bodies inside. There are pieces of clothing and bone found scattered around the grave due to animals in the area. A responding officer noticed that the clothing they were finding matched the description of the Chia siblings missing out of Reno.
Police in California contact Reno along with other police agencies who are missing children. Reno police sent in dental records of the Chia kids for comparison. The next day, July 26th, the initial autopsy is conducted and it's confirmed via the dental records that it's Charles and Jennifer Chia. According to police, there were no obvious signs of injury, but further testing was going to be done. Reno police call Ann Chang down to the station in the evening hours to break the news to her.
The news is so upsetting that she goes into shock and police have to call an ambulance for her. Police continue to investigate the site where the bodies were found and they do say that they're able to find additional evidence, but they don't elaborate on what that is. Police are unable to determine how long the children were in the grave, but since the clothing matched what they were last seen wearing, police do believe that they were killed shortly after their abduction.
It takes about three days for their autopsy to be complete and the police do not give any details from the report. However, they will mention years later that they were obviously the victims of homicide. Two business owners in Reno post a $50,000 reward for information leading to the conviction of whoever murdered the Chia children. Tips are called into the hotline that was specifically set up for this case and police are confident that they'll be able to solve it.
They ask that anyone who was driving through Plumas County, California in October of 1989 to call in with anything that they saw. Police are hopeful that since there was the earthquake the day before the children were abducted that people would be more likely to remember the following days surrounding that event. On August 15th, almost exactly 10 months since the last time Charles and Jennifer were seen alive, they both are laid to rest at the Mountain View Cemetery.
The brother and sister are buried together and they have Donald Duck and Cinderella engraved on their tombstones along with their names. Despite confidence from the police that they were going to solve this case, in November it's announced that the FBI will take over the investigation. I assume there were things happening behind the scenes, but the next big breakthrough in the case comes in August of 1993.
This is over three years since Charles and Jennifer's bodies had been found, but police, along with forensic scientists and forensic anthropologists, return to the shallow grave to try to find any additional evidence. They end up finding a femur as well as other small bones. Police don't go into detail, but additional evidence is also found. In October of 1995, it's been six years since the abduction, police give a huge update to the public.
The first major update is that they have a suspect, James Grooms. Grooms was the man who was trying to extort the family for $100,000. Police say they found evidence in Grooms' home that he knew the Chia kids beforehand and knew their mother owned the Imperial Palace. He had also told friends that he had abducted the children along with an accomplice and he could produce no alibi for the day the children were abducted.
Police are also wanting to talk to a man with long blonde hair that had donated money to the children's trust fund after their funeral. He had a huge emotional outburst in the bank and the teller became nervous and turned on the surveillance footage. So police are trying to locate him and talk to him. Police also received a tip from a married couple that said they saw a brown van with its back doors open near the gravesite a few weeks after the abduction in 1989.
The brown van is said to have a Miller Lite gear shift. Police remind the public that they are still looking for the man who was leaning on the pickup truck near the bus stop the day the Chia children were abducted. Anne publishes an open letter in the newspaper pleading for information. She says quote, I need the community's help. I just need to know the answer. I need to know the reason they took away my two kids. End quote. She also offers $20,000 of her own money for information.
In 1995 the case was being worked by Detective Ron Dreher and he will continue to work the case even after he retires from the police force. He says quote, a killer is on the loose in our community. To those with specific information on the Chia murders and who are in the know, please come forward with any and all information. End quote.
Despite this big update from police, the next anniversary rolls around in October of 1996 and police are still at the same spot asking the public for the same information. They have been unable to tie James Grooms to the murder or abduction of the Chia children. He claims he had nothing to do with the murders. In May of 1998, James Grooms is released from prison having served nine out of his 10 year sentence.
At the 10 year anniversary of the children's abduction, so October 1999, police asked the media to run lots of stories on Charles and Jennifer in hopes of stirring up some new leads and this year it works. Police say they had a major lead come in. The caller said they had seen a 1966 white Volkswagen hatchback near where the children were buried. James Grooms owned the exact same type of vehicle in 1989.
Police are able to track down the prior owner of the vehicle and get the VIN number and a picture of the car. Police search registered vehicles in the United States, but it's not registered anywhere. The last registered owner was James Grooms. Police ask for the public's help in finding the car. Deputy Chief Jim Watson says quote, even if it's crushed, we can get that vehicle back. There may be some trace evidence in it. End quote.
Police consider this the biggest lead in the case that they've had in years. Police tracked down James Grooms, who at this time lived in California, to talk to him about the vehicle. After police contact him though, he goes on the run and police are not able to find him to question him again. Deputy Chief Watson said this about Grooms quote, he has always been a subject of the investigation all these years.
We've spent time investigating him, trying to connect him to the crime, but have never developed enough information to make an arrest. End quote. Ann is hopeful, but realistic with the break in the case. She says quote, I'm still so happy that people come out to talk to detectives and give them information. This is a really good sign. I just don't know how they will find the car. End quote. Police search for the Volkswagen for years, but are never able to locate it.
Every October, the police ask the local media to cover the story to keep the public interest in the case and to hopefully get more leads. As technology advances and DNA becomes more commonplace, police announce in 2002 that they do not have any DNA in this case. In October of 2005, so this is 16 years since the murder of Charles and Jennifer, police say they still are looking for the same information and beg the public to come forward if they know anything about the crime.
The next month, in November, James Grooms is arrested on unrelated charges and he gives a jailhouse interview. He says quote, I will always be one of the prime suspects in this case until the killer is found. I wish this could be solved. I made the phone calls, but I had nothing to do with the killing of those kids. End quote. Grooms says he saw the abduction on TV in 1989 and was using a lot of drugs at that time and made the phone call trying to get money to support his habit.
He had also eaten at the Imperial Palace before and had the menus at his home. He says he called the restaurant three times, two times asking for the money and the third time he told Ann that he didn't know anything about the children's whereabouts and apologized. In regards to the Volkswagen, Grooms says that weeks before the abduction, he dropped the car off at an auto repair shop and never returned to pick the car up.
He says at the time of the abduction, his only mode of transportation was a bicycle. Police say that when they arrested Grooms in 1989 on the extortion charges, that they did not know he owned a Volkswagen at that time, which I take to mean that he did not have it in his possession the days following the murder. The next year, October 2006, 17 years since the murder of Charles and Jennifer, police asked for the public's help in finding a new person.
They're looking for the man that lived with James Grooms in 1989. He goes by the nickname Ma, and he also worked at the Imperial Palace. Ann still thinks about her children every day. By this time, she has remarried and is raising a young daughter with her new husband, but the pain remains for Charles and Jennifer. She says quote, I still wonder why this happened. It's still a big question in my mind and my heart.
Someone needs to stand up and show the police department who did this because we don't want anyone else killed. End quote. As of 2022, so that's 33 years since the abduction and murder of Charles and Jennifer Chia, the Reno police have two retired detectives working solely on this case, one of them being Ron Dreher.
In 2022, police mention that a few days before Charles and Jennifer were abducted, a man with long blonde hair attempted to kidnap two other children in Beckwourth, California, which is about 45 minutes from Reno. Police are still looking for any information that could lead to the arrest and conviction of the person or persons who abducted and murdered Charles and Jennifer Chia. So with that, if you know anything, please call the Reno Police Department at 775-334-2677.
To remain anonymous, you can call Secret Witness at 775-322-4900 or you can call Ron Dreher directly at 775-830-8877. The sources for the timeline today come from Reno Gazette Journal and they covered this case extensively. I read the most articles from them, the Sacramento Bee, Merced Sunstar, Feather River Bulletin, Elko Daily Free Press, and Kolo 8 News. So that is the case of Charles and Jennifer Chia. And the thing that I just kept saying to myself over and over again was, it was 100 feet.
100 feet. A hundred feet. A hundred feet. Wow. Such a small moment. It's such a small space for two children to go missing. Yeah. They didn't do anything out of the ordinary. That's the thing. No, they didn't. And that's what's about it because you know some very destructive evil forces on the outside are at play then.
If we can, I'd like to recap the, I guess it's like two or three, in my mind right now, I received it like different men involved slash, because there is the John Lennon guy and then there's James Grooms and then there's Ma. Yeah. So James Grooms, the police get a lot of interest in him because he kind of puts himself into the case by calling the mother and trying to extort $100,000 out of her while her children are missing. Yeah. I mean he says he's been there, he's eaten in there.
And his explanation for where his car is, the Volkswagen, is not great. No. He's like, I have a bike. Yeah. He said his only mode of transportation was the bike and that he dropped his car off and just never picked it up. Yeah, that whole part with the cops, them being like, oh, we didn't know he had a Volkswagen. I'm sorry. I'm not like, I just don't understand. How did you not know?
Yeah. They said that they didn't know at the time of his arrest in 1989 that he had this car registered to him, which again, I just take to mean that it wasn't with him when he was arrested or at his home. So it seems like he had gotten rid of the car by then. Yeah. I don't know why police didn't maybe search at that time for cars registered to his name. I don't know if that was done, why it wasn't done. Yeah, I guess that's more of what I'm not asking a question on.
I'm more just like commenting on the fact that like, I mean, still 1989, it seems like a very basic thing that even if it wasn't there, simply, I think, asking questions of people who lived around him, even in basic interviews, like, have you ever seen this car? You would have gotten multiple yeses. So I guess I just, you can't answer the question like, hey, what the hell happened in that area? Right. Why is that?
It was instinctual to me to ask the question, so I'm assuming with police work, it's like, yeah. So I don't understand why there's just like a blank space there.
One of the questions that I had, or just if I had the chance to ask police whatever I wanted, I am curious, the man with long blonde hair, they mentioned two men with long blonde hair, there's the man in the bank who has this big emotional outburst after making a donation so big that the teller gets nervous and she turns on like their surveillance system to record the guy.
And then the other person with or the other man with long blonde hair, police mentioned tried to abduct two children a few days before Charles and Jennifer were abducted. So I want to know if police think that these two men are connected, if do they meet any similar? Is it two men? That's the thing. I'm like, is it actually two men? Or is it the same guy? Yeah. I mean, the likelihood of it being the same man to me is very, very, very high. Right.
And that detail of that man with long blonde hair trying to abduct two children, the fact that it's two children is to me significant because that's a pretty bold move to try to take two children at the same time. Yeah. I mean, it's a bold move to like children are, you can't count on how they're going to react. No. So like, yeah, I think trying to commit that kind of crime is, you're like taking a very big risk. Yeah. I'm just curious about that man.
And I almost wonder if like, that should be a focus of police's time and energy is figuring out who this man with long blonde hair is or was. But there are still several outstanding, not suspects, but just like people the police want to talk to. There's the man that was seen by the bus stop with the John Lennon glasses. Yeah. Police have never found him that I'm aware of. The roommate Ma, who I don't believe has been found.
James Groom, as soon as he's released from prison again, he goes on the run. So police kind of lose him and find him again. He kind of drops in and out of police's radar. And police still want to talk to the married couple that saw the brown van with the Miller light. There's two cars kind of seen near the gravesite, this brown van and the Volkswagen. Yeah, the one after the burial, right? Right. Seen around the time. Yeah. Just a lot of weird characters. But blurred. It's like it's all smudged.
All the details of that are like, it was just freshly drawn with ink and then someone took their hand and smudged it all. All of the details surrounding it. It's so odd to me. Just like overall, it's odd because it's a case that like, yes, there were moments of silence and dust collecting, but that's not because no one was doing anything. It was just there was no new leads. This was one of the cases where I was like, they were on it right away. The parents both came back.
Everything fell in line. It was like the little details that fell apart this time because they keep up with trying to figure out what happened to these poor kids. Yeah, absolutely. Detective Ron Dreher, who's worked the case and is still working it in his retirement. In his retirement, yeah. He says this has never been a cold case because they've always been working it. And a cold case is technically when leads have stopped and investigators stop working it.
But this has never been cold in the 30 plus years since it's happened. And it's one of the biggest cases in Reno, I'm sure any listeners around that area are probably familiar, but this is one that I was not familiar with. And I couldn't find a lot of media outside of Reno, Nevada around it. Like not a lot of podcasts, no investigation discovery episodes, just really nothing outside of Reno, Nevada, but the case was very well covered in Reno.
Yeah. But hopefully we can get those last pieces of information or people will come forward that either know these people mentioned in the story or have more information and this case will get solved. If you know anything, please call Reno police at 775-334-2677. To remain anonymous, you can call secret witness at 775-322-4900. While you're still in your podcast app, maybe on your phone, if you could just take a second to rate and review us.
If you're an Apple podcast, taking a minute to write us a written review really helps the podcast find other people and therefore other people find these stories. So just by rating and reviewing you are directly helping the mission of this podcast, which is to get these stories out to as many people as possible. If you're not already, you should absolutely follow us on Instagram. You can find us at cold and missing Eli makes beautiful graphics every week of the people that we cover.
So we'll have pictures of Charles and Jennifer this week up on our Instagram and at our website. You can find us at cold and missing.com on our website. We also have transcripts. So if you or someone you love is deaf or hard of hearing and want to read along with the podcast, you can find that there along with other pictures and information. You can review us there. There's a lot of good stuff on our website. So check us out there. And that's all I have. Have a good week and stay safe y'all.
Stay safe y'all.