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 to Cold and Missing. I'm Ali. And I'm Eli.
Welcome back everyone. Thank you for joining us on our podcast. And again, at the top, just thank you to all the support we've gotten over the last few weeks, months even, seeing lots of reviews come in, seeing the numbers just grow and grow and grow. So thank you if you've told somebody in your life to check out a podcast or shared an episode. It all means a lot to us and the mission that we're trying to do here at Cold and Missing.
Just witnessing the community engaging, that's exactly what we set out to do. So it's very cool to see. And love seeing the comments, love seeing you guys engage with each other and with us. But with that, should we just go ahead and jump into this week's episode? Episode 102, let's do it. So just as a bit of a content warning, this case does involve a young person. Today we are talking about the disappearance of Jaquilla Scales. And this takes place in September of 2001 in Wichita, Kansas.
But first, a little bit about Jaquilla. Jaquilla is only four years old in 2001. Those that loved Jaquilla said that she had an old soul. In fact, her family called her Granny Boo. Jaquilla and her two-year-old brother lived with their great-grandmother, Mattie. Jaquilla's mom, Eureka, lived there too. Eureka had Jaquilla when she was only 14 years old. Since Eureka was so young, her grandmother, Mattie, took custody of Jaquilla.
Eureka's own mother had passed away when she was only eight years old due to sickle cell anemia. So Jaquilla never had a chance to meet her true grandmother. But Mattie stepped into the grandmother role as a great-grandmother. Jaquilla, her younger brother, Eureka, and Mattie all lived together on the 1600 block of Volusia Avenue on Wichita's northeast side. The little pink home did have one known issue. The back door was broken and unable to lock. But the family felt safe.
The back door was in Mattie’s room and her dog barked at everything and everyone. They were sure if someone tried to get in, they would hear it. Jaquilla loved McDonald's, pretty dresses, playing with dolls, and dancing to R&B music. At just four years old, she loved to just chat, chat, chat away with folks, further assuring those around her of her old soul. Jaquilla in 2001 is three foot and weighs 40 pounds. She has a scar on her upper right leg and a birthmark on her face.
And now, a timeline of events. On Tuesday, September 4th, 2001, Jaquilla had had a big day. She had just started preschool that day and she had just spent Labor Day weekend playing with family and friends. When it was time to get ready for bed, she put on her floral nightgown and crawled into her great-grandmother's bed with her little brother around 8 p.m. Even though it was September, it was still very hot outside and Mattie’s room had the window AC unit.
Also in Mattie’s room was that back door that I mentioned previously. After putting the kids to bed, Mattie took her evening medication for her arthritis, which made her drowsy. She got into bed to get comfortable and watched TV while Jaquilla and her younger brother slept next to her. At around 1230 a.m. on Wednesday, September 5th, so that same night but technically the next day, Mattie notices that Jaquilla is shivering while sleeping so close to the AC unit.
She covers her up with a comforter. At around 3 a.m., Mattie wakes up again and finds the bedroom back door wide open and Jaquilla is gone. Mattie starts searching for Jaquilla immediately. Mattie hadn't heard her dog barking, so she begins checking the house, looking in every space that Jaquilla could possibly fit in, and when she doesn't find her, at 4.06 a.m., she calls 911 to report her missing. By 4.30 a.m., police are knocking on the door of the apartment where Eureka was staying.
Eureka had been spending nights with friends and getting some space from her grandmother as they were starting to bicker more and more. Her and her friend had been staying up watching TV for most of the night. When they went out on the front porch in the early morning hours, they started to notice more and more cop cars drive by. When police knock on the door, they ask if she has her daughter. Eureka is instantly frightened and tells police that her daughter stays with her grandmother, Mattie.
Police ask to search the friend's apartment for Jaquilla, and they're allowed to. They don't find any sign of the girl. Eureka rushes to her home on Volusia Avenue and asks her grandmother what's going on. Eureka, looking back at the event, says, quote, she said she didn't know. She thinks somebody came into the backyard, into her back door, and took her out the bed. That's when I lost it. Like, are you for real? You sure? She ain't nowhere in this house hiding.
She said she looked everywhere and she couldn't find her. I couldn't figure out why it happened or who would want to do this to her or to me, unquote. As the morning ticks on, police start combing the neighborhood and going door to door to ask neighbors if they had seen Jaquilla. Police search homes to make sure Jaquilla isn't somewhere hiding. Family and friends come to the neighborhood to help assist. As news starts to spread, local news and radio start to report on the story.
At this time in 2001, there was no official Amber Alert system in Wichita. Over the next two days, the search party grows with not just more volunteers from the community, but also local, state, and federal investigators come to help aid in the search. Police get two tips that they rush to chase down in the first few days. One is from a woman who thought she saw Jaquilla at Burger King. But when police arrive, the girl is too young to be her.
Another woman calls in a tip because she finds a teddy bear and four children's VHS tapes on a street corner. This ends up having nothing to do with Jaquilla, police say. On September 9, 2001, police begin focusing on dragging and searching storm drains in the area for any sign of the missing four-year-old. Despite Jaquilla having been missing for four days, police have no leads on what might have happened to her.
And then September 11 happened and the nation turned their eyes to the East Coast, and the news was dominated with media related to 9-11. It takes months for Jaquilla's story to get into the media again, but behind the scenes, police continue to search and run down leads. The next update comes in December of 2001, so Jaquilla has been missing for three months.
Police say that they haven't been able to rule out the theory that Jaquilla just got up and wandered out of the house, but police and the family seriously doubt that happened. Jaquilla was scared of the dark. Her mother Eureka says, quote, she would never look out that door into the dark and decide to go out there, end quote.
In February of 2002, so it's been five months since Jaquilla vanished, police say that they do not believe that this is a case of parental abduction, but they also do not have any suspects in the case. Mattie tells local media that she has stopped taking her medication at night except for aspirin so she can be alert in the night if Jaquilla comes home. Mattie is heartbroken for her great granddaughter.
She again tells the local media that she has lost three of her own children, Jaquilla's grandmother to sickle cell anemia. Her son was stabbed to death in a case of mistaken identity, and she lost another child at just 10 months old. But Jaquilla's disappearance is a different kind of pain. Mattie says, quote, this is worse than my kid dying. This here is painful. Dead, I can understand. Disappeared, I can't handle, end quote.
The family also begs that whoever has Jaquilla that they take her to the doctor for checkups. It's revealed here that Jaquilla also has been diagnosed with sickle cell anemia. Mattie says, quote, whoever got her, please make sure she gets her checkup, end quote. In September of 2002, so it's been one year since Jaquilla disappeared, and there has been some progress on her case. Police say that they have ruled out Jaquilla's family as being involved in her disappearance.
However, police are now at a dead end with the case. Lieutenant Roy Mitchell says, quote, we still have no suspects. We really don't know what happened that night, end quote. Police and Jaquilla's family find it hard to believe that Jaquilla would wander into the dark. Equally, though, they doubt that someone would be bold enough to walk into a room with two other sleeping people and take her from the bed.
Jaquilla's mother, Eureka, says, quote, Jaquilla would start crying if someone tried to move her. She didn't like to be bothered. It would have had to have been someone she knew, end quote. Jaquilla's family are also frustrated with the lack of national media attention that her case has gotten. Elizabeth Smart had been kidnapped in the summer of 2002 out of her bed, and the case was covered coast to coast. But Jaquilla, being snatched out of her bed, only made the local news.
Jaquilla's case will again and again be a catalyst to start the conversation of why are some cases covered more than others? Does race and socioeconomic status play a part? We now know that these things do matter in reporting of lost children, but the conversation was happening back in 2002 as well.
At the three-year anniversary of her disappearance in September of 2004, the family gets renewed hope that Jaquilla's picture and her age-progressed photo will be featured on a flyer that will be mailed out nationally. Her mother still holds onto the hope that she'll come home, quote, every day I wake up I think it's going to happen. She's going to be home, but she's still not here, end quote. The next update comes in 2011, so at this point it's been 10 years since Jaquilla disappeared.
Police say that due to advances in DNA, they are getting ready to submit Jaquilla's DNA to a database to see if there's any hit. But nothing comes of this as of 2024. In 2013, so it's been 12 years since Jaquilla vanished, and the family remains hopeful that Jaquilla can still come home alive. They see what happened in Ohio, where Amanda Barry, Michelle Knight, and Gina DeJesus were all rescued after being held captive in Ariel Castro's basement. All three girls had been missing for years.
Michelle Barry had been missing for over 10 years when she was rescued, and Jaquilla's family have to hang on to hope that this could be true for her too. In 2018, Jaquilla has been missing for 17 years. Police do say that they have developed some suspects in the case, but they are very tight-lipped about this information.
They don't give any additional details as to how the suspect came about, who it is, who they were in 2001 in relation to Jaquilla, no information, but it does seem like police have a suspect, at least one, in 2018. But that is really the last update that we get about Jaquilla's case and the last development in the case. So if you know anything about the disappearance of Jaquilla's scales in September of 2001, or her whereabouts today, please call the Wichita Cold Case Unit at 316-268-4379.
So that is the case of Jaquilla's scales. I really appreciated that you had so much detail about her family. They seem like such a supportive family, even through what seems like the unimaginable, like the amount of things collectively that they've gone through as a family. But you could still really feel the love that they had for each other. Yeah. Jaquilla was very close with her great-grandmother, Mattie, and they had a very special bond with Jaquilla having the nickname Granny Boo.
Just really sweet. I loved the nickname Granny Boo for a little four-year-old. It made me laugh, and I understood that four-year-old kind of perfectly with that nickname. Yeah. I could very clearly see her and her spirit in my head. But what seems extra vicious about this crime happening is that the familiarity of the family, even when you said the pink house, I could instantly picture it. Yeah, it seemed just extra vicious to me because I can see and feel the family so clearly. Absolutely.
What happened even all these years later, I mean, as of recording this, it'll be 23 years since she's vanished. I still don't seem to have a clear picture of exactly what happened that night. I have so many questions about what evidence they were able to gather during those first initial days. Yeah, me as well, because what I wrote down was sleeping in safety, the way that they just slept as a family. I guess I wanted to hear your thoughts more on that because it was a small house.
They were sleeping close together. How did... I just want to know what you think about it. It is a small house, whenever I looked it up on Google Maps. It is a small house with Mattie, Jaquilla, and Jaquilla's little brother all sleeping in the same bed in a tight room. The bedroom wasn't that big either. From the description, it sounds like the back door was kind of right next to the bed.
It does seem very emboldened that somebody would just walk in and grab her and leave with two people sleeping. Granted, one of them is a young two-year-old, but the other person is an adult. Yes, she did have medication that made her drowsy. It's still a very bold move. Yes, bold and equally as nightmarish, like the description of waking up and something being a few degrees off, but shocking and startling to wake up that way.
But the community really showed up for this family, and I just had to make extra note of that because it seemed like everyone was there for them instantly. Yeah, and I do just want to say one thing here, kind of about the timeline of Jaquilla going missing. There are some family members who have cast doubt on Mattie's story of things, but one thing that is certain in police reporting and all the media reporting are the times.
So it does seem very surely that around 1230, around midnight, Jaquilla is seen, and then around 3 a.m. she's gone. So it's a three-hour window that the unimaginable happens.
Yeah, and with the unimaginable, there was another, there was a global unimaginable with 9-11, and something that I wrote down was the shift in focus that just has to happen because the national trauma, because it's just so big, that it has to be just heartbreakingly difficult to know that even though you have a loved one who is missing, that this is also happening in the world, and it's just so much, and this family has been through so much. I really hope that they find answers.
Yeah, you know, you and I, we were both kind of in middle school when 9-11 happened, but it did dominate the news. That's one thing I remember very clearly. It was on every channel, even the kids' channels, like Nickelodeon had news coverage on it. So it was everywhere, but because the national attention had shifted, how many other people went missing right around this time that just never got the coverage that maybe they should have gotten because attention was elsewhere.
It just feels like these victims and kind of the echo of everything. That brings me to, the harsh reality of that brings me to ask the question of why do you think law enforcement was so tight lipped? You're talking about the suspects that police talked about in 2018? Yes, I know this timeline had a lot in it, but you, something else I wrote down was the timeline and like comparison and clarity was, it was present. I followed along, but yes, what I'm talking about right now is from 2018.
Yeah, I'm really curious about the suspects or suspects. It really does seem like police have developed a couple of promising leads. I would be very curious to know, you know, if I could sit down with police and know anything, I would want to know what the status of these suspects are. Are they still interested in these people? Have they been able to rule them out? You know, are they just kind of waiting for the one tip to confirm involvement?
I would really be curious to know where the case stands today and what's being done for Jekyla today. Well, I think what we can do here is just, you know, bringing her name to the forefront and hopefully people listen and her name gets circulating again and her story because her family really deserves some peace. Absolutely. Her family deserves answers and Jekyla deserves to come home. You know, if she's somewhere, she deserves to come home to her family.
She didn't get to spend a lot of her life with them, so she deserves all of the time. And again, if you know anything about the disappearance of Jekyla's scales in September of 2001 or her whereabouts today, please call the Wichita Cold Case Unit at 316-268-4379. And we will have Jekyla's picture, what she looked like at four years old, as well as her most recent age progression up on our Instagram at Cold and Missing.
So if your following is there, please share the photo of Jekyla and the age progression just to get it out there in your stories, in your community. Please share it, get her face out there, her age progression out there, and her case out there. And again, you can find us at Cold and Missing. And like I said at the beginning, thank you all so much if you've taken the time to review us this summer. I really appreciate the comments, the feedbacks.
It means so much to me that you would take the time out of your day to communicate and just like tell us your thoughts. So thank you if you have the time today and you want to tell us something, go ahead and do it. You can leave us a review, five stars on Spotify, five stars in Apple, and a written review gets us really far with finding more audience members to listen to these cases.
And if you or someone you love is hard of hearing, you can find transcripts to not only this episode, but all of our other episodes on our website, www.coldandmissing.com. You can also reach out to us there, leave a review there if you're not on Apple podcasts. There's a lot on our website, so go click around and see if there's some cases you haven't listened to before. Thank you again so much for listening to Cold and Missing. I'm your host, Allie. And I'm your co-host, Eli.
Have a good week and stay safe, y'all. Stay safe, y'all.