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 your
host, Allie. And I'm your co -host, Eli. Welcome back, everyone. We are going to just get right into it this week. We're on episode 124 this week, and we're covering a missing case. That's right, episode 124. And yes, we are covering a missing person case today. So just as a quick content warning at the top, this case does involve a young person, and there are some brief mentions
of sexual assault. Today, we are talking about the missing person case of Karen Grejeda, and this takes place in January of 1996 in Tucson, Arizona. But first, a little bit about Karen. Karen is 7 years old in 1996. She lives with her mother, Rosalba, and her younger sister, Alejandra, in the Suararo Crest Apartments in Tucson, Arizona. Karen speaks both English and Spanish with ease. Her mother only speaks Spanish,
and her father lived and worked in Mexico. Her parents were no longer together at this time. Karen is a first grader at Elvira Elementary School, where she was known as an outgoing child. She liked to write poems and stories and was talkative. The apartment complex where she lived had a lot of other children, so there was always someone to play with, always a friend nearby. At this time in 1996, Karen has shoulder -length black hair and brown eyes. She is 3 foot 5 inches
tall with a thin build. She was also missing her front teeth. And now, a timeline of events. On Thursday, January 11th, 1996. Karen had a very normal day at Elvira Elementary School and came home that evening and dropped her bag off at her apartment. She's wearing a light pastel flowered short and a faded purple shirt with white writing on the front. Karen headed outside to play. It appears that she hit all the major childhood activities. She took her bike out for
a ride. came in and played some Super Mario on her Nintendo and then picked up her room a bit. She then headed back outside with her roller skates on to keep playing with her little sister and their friends in the complex. At around 5 .45 p .m., Karen came back in the apartment and dropped off her skates and asked her mom if she could go back outside to play. Her mother agreed but reminded her that she needed to be back soon
since dinner was almost ready. Karen told her mom okay and ran back outside to continue playing. At around 6 p .m., so just 15 minutes later, dinner was ready. Rosalba called for her daughters to come in and eat. Karen's little sister, Alejandra, came back to the apartment. When her mom asked where Karen was, she responded with that she didn't know. They had lost track of each other while they were playing. They both expected Karen
to walk in the door at any moment. When Karen didn't turn up in a few minutes, Rosalba heads outside to look for her. There were still several kids playing in the courtyard. Rosalba asked them where Karen is, but they said they didn't know. Some kids say they saw Karen walk out of the courtyard of the apartment complex. Panic starts to rise in Rosalba as it gets darker and
darker outside. It's unclear exactly when the police are called that evening, but it appears that it was pretty quickly after Karen was discovered missing, and the police immediately spring into action. Police search through the night looking for Karen, but no sign of her is found. The next day, January 12th, police start going door to door at the apartment complex looking for Karen.
They start searching apartments in the complex as well, checking every small space that Karen could fit into to make sure she's not there. But no one in the complex said they saw anything. There wasn't any signs of struggle. No one heard a scream. No one saw anyone strange hanging around the apartment complex. Police talk to everyone who lives there, all 410 units. No sign of Karen is found. Police are focusing on searching nine
square miles around the apartment. They have officers and volunteers searching on foot, bike, car, horseback, ATV, anything trying to find a sign of Karen. Investigators are also talking with registered sex offenders in the area to check on their alibi for the time that Karen went missing. As news spreads of the missing little girl, some possible sightings do come
in, but none of them lead to Karen. The most promising was a girl matching Karen's description was seen crying at a grocery store a few miles away from the apartment complex on the night that Karen went missing. However, the witness couldn't remember exactly what time they had seen the girl. It would have been early evening through 6 .30. Karen last walked out of her apartment at about 5 .45 p .m., so it's a tight window at the end there. Karen's mother is hysterical
by her daughter missing. To complicate matters, she's also pregnant at this time with her third daughter. Karen's family beg for her safe return. Since Rosalba didn't speak English, her sister Ruth speaks for her and her family. The family speaks to whoever has Karen, quote, have a bit of compassion for her mother. Return her as she is, alive or dead, because we need to end this torment, end quote. Police are treating Karen's case as a missing person, but it's not officially
ruled a kidnapping at this point. Police say, quote, it's anybody's guess. We have insufficient information to know what happened to her. You get frustrated. You can theorize or suspect a lot of things. To be honest, we looked at everything, end quote. Police have theorized everything from Karen wandering away on her own to a stranger kidnapping. As that Friday day progresses, it's approaching 24 hours that Karen has been missing. There's still no sign of her, and the FBI offers
assistance in the case. Investigators start treating her case more and more as a kidnapping with each growing hour. Over this first weekend that Karen went missing, police will search nonstop. They search all through the night and keep at it in the morning, just rotating officers out to sleep and eat, essentially. But there's always people looking for Karen. Volunteers come in to help as well, and family and friends cover Tucson and Flyers. But by Monday, January 15th, Karen
has been missing since Thursday. Police say that they have ruled out almost every tip that has been called in, and it's nearly 600 of them. None of them led to Karen or gave any clue about what happened to her. The most promising lead over the weekend was a set of small footprints found on the San Xavier Reservation. When investigators take a closer look at the print, the size is half an inch too big and the tread pattern of the shoe didn't match the pair that Karen was
wearing. Police now are officially handling her case as a kidnapping. They're back searching that nine miles around the complex, and it's reported that some drops of blood are found. This is sent for testing, but the results are never published, so it's unclear if this is related to Karen's case at all. About mid -afternoon on Monday, police end the search early and announce that the case is being handed off to a special team of 10 detectives who are going to work the
case. Karen's father had flown in from Mexico to help aid in the search, and he says, quote, I believe that she's okay. I think they would have found something by now if that was not the case. As long as she's alive, we can work on handling whatever happened to her. End quote. On Thursday, January 18th, Karen has been missing for one week. Police announced that they got a tip on the tip line. Someone had called in saying that they had seen a white compact car
cruising the area where Karen had lived. Police asked that whoever called in the tip to please call back so they can get more information and specifics, like when the car was seen, what time, where, and any description of the person or people inside the car that they could give. Parents are scared in Tucson. Karen's disappearance was on the heels of an attempted abduction in December of 1995, so a month before Karen went missing.
A young girl was waiting inside her elementary school, just inside the doors, when a man approached and tried to get her to open the locked doors and go with him. The girl got scared and left and got a janitor and when they both returned, the man was gone. Then Karen vanished in January of 1996, just a few weeks after this. And then one week later, on the 18th, there was another
attempted kidnapping. A mother and her daughter were playing in the backyard when the mom stepped inside for a moment to check on the laundry. When she returned just a moment later, she saw a man trying to lure her daughter over to him. The mom and the man got into a physical fight, and thankfully, the family's three dogs started to attack the man until he ran off. Police release a description of the man. He would have been
in his late teens or early 20s. He was Hispanic, and police note that he would have had several dog bites at this time. The special investigating team continue to use the FBI resources to aid in their search, but still, no big breakthroughs in the case come and no evidence of what happened to Karen is found. As the weeks press on and January turns into February, Billboards of Karen's face go up around Tucson, and this continues
to bring tips in. But again, police are able to rule tip after tip out, and none of them lead to Karen. It's been almost three weeks since Karen was kidnapped, and an 11 -year -old girl escapes an attempted abduction as well. She was walking just a few houses over from her own house to a friend's house so they could walk to school together. She was between the two houses when a man pulled up in a white, two -door, compact car and told her that her mother wanted him to
drive her to school. The girl takes off running to her friend's house, where the friend's older brother was outside and saw the whole interaction. The driver of the car was described as a white man with short to medium -length hair, and he was wearing a black and white checkered shirt. As it approaches one month that Karen is missing, police and FBI return to the apartment complex and re -interview all the residents. Investigators remain optimistic that Karen is still alive.
Quote, So we're pretty optimistic that she is still alive and that someone is just hanging onto her out there for some reason, end quote. But the lack of leads is making it difficult for police. The FBI wants to create a profile of the kidnapper, but there's not enough evidence to give them information to build the profile. In March, so it's been over two months now since Karen was kidnapped, and her mother begs for her return and sends a message to her daughter.
She says, quote, Please help me find my daughter, and I'll be grateful to you for the rest of my life. Whatever kind of information you have, please dial 911. Karen, it's your mommy. Wherever you are, we will find you, darling. Go to a nearby telephone and dial 911. We will go for you. I and your sister love you and are waiting here for you. End quote. Police say that their investigation has intensified over the last few months, but
declined to give any other update. The next update comes at the end of May, so Karen has been missing for over four months. A police sketch is released of a man that was wanted in a series of sexual assaults against young girls in 1993, three years before Karen vanished. However, police believe that the same suspect could be connected to Karen's case and another unsolved murder of a young girl in the area. Eventually, police will arrest Rodolfo Sedeno Morales and charge him in relation to
the 1993 sexual assaults. He is ultimately found guilty in 1998 for kidnapping five girls and assaulting three of them. He is serving a 248 -year sentence. Police tie Morales to the unsolved murder since he does match a suspect sketch in that case, and police link him to Karen's case since she matches the profile of the other victims, young Hispanic girls who all lived on the south
side of Tucson in apartment complexes. Additionally, to further tie Morales to Karen's case, he had lived in the same apartment complex as Karen previously. He didn't live there at the time of her disappearance, but he still had friends that lived at the complex. He remains a strong suspect in Karen's case, and really the only suspect ever named in her case. Years go by, and Karen's case is mentioned in the media, especially
around anniversaries of her disappearance. Her mother is a champion of her case and keeps it in the media, but there are no new updates, no new leads, no new suspects. Until 2023. In 2023, Karen has been missing for over 27 years, and police will, without getting into specifics, say that they are looking at some new suspects.
They still don't have anything solid in Karen's case, but the unsolved murder that I mentioned that we'll cover on a future episode of Cold and Missing had had advances in forensic technology and the police were looking at a new suspect. Police believe that Karen's case could be connected to this unsolved murder. However, Karen's family believe that Morales is guilty of kidnapping Karen. But that is all we know about the kidnapping
of Karen Grejeda in January of 1996. So if you know anything about the disappearance of Karen or her whereabouts today, please call the Tucson Police at 520 -791 -4444. So that is the case of Karen Grejeda. All of the cases that you bring to Cold and Missing and that you cover, of course, frighten and scare me to listen to them, but Karen's case was one of those cases where it
immediately frightened me. I was very nervous listening to this story because it was very easy to imagine myself, a 90s kid, the way she... Kind of did her little tour when she got home from school, was very similar to mine. And this one was very palpable and heartbreaking, very hard to listen to. Yeah, I thought that was something that was really familiar about the case, too, was just how normal the after -school activity
was. Like her, you know, running in and out, mom cooking dinner, her and her siblings, the kids in the apartment complex playing, like... All of that was so very familiar to me and felt familiar to me. And I think that's, you know, kind of aids in, like, how terrifying this case feels because it feels familiar. Yeah, and with the familiarity, the other side of that coin is the predictability for someone who is trying to commit a crime like kidnapping, knowing someone's
schedule, you know. after school schedule or whatever the familiarity of her routine felt there was a moment of safety in my connection to it and immediately was you know ripped away because I knew that there was a possibility that maybe she was being watched while she was just doing her thing. One thing that does kind of feel just to pivot into this case a little bit is that For Karen to be kidnapped, it was a very bold move just because this is a big apartment
complex, 410 units. It kind of looks like two squares sitting next to each other and then courtyards in the center. So, you know, everyone would be able to see into the courtyard from their building.
So would have been a very bold. kidnapping because there's all these eyes there's kids running around there's a lot of presence and you know there's people outside so yeah this this case baffles me in a lot of ways um and the disruption of the routine like you were saying the watching like all of that feels present in this case even though we really don't know that much about what really happened I think because we have covered cases similar to Karen's, just from investigating
and listening, you learn the behaviors of perpetrators. So when I listened to a case, sadly, I understood how this would have been a perfect spot for someone who was trying to... maybe committed kidnapping. I think that, yes, it is very bold to do it, you know, mid -afternoon, after school, dinner's getting ready, a lot of people around. But also, is it a perfect environment for someone like
that to blend in? And I think that's absolutely possible, especially if, you know, they fit the demographic of the folks who are already living there. The familiarity of Maybe a white compact car not looking out of place. Those were all things that crossed my mind. Yeah. And that is something that, like, I come back to. Like, the person who did this fit in there in some way. Like, didn't draw attention to themselves, really. Because nobody, you know, they asked. All the
residents, did you see anything? Did you see anybody out of the ordinary? And nobody said they saw anybody strange. Nobody knew or unfamiliar hanging around. So it leads me to believe that it's either, you know, somebody in the apartment complex proper or somebody who, you know, was in and around it a lot and would have just blended in. Yeah, I think that just adds another piece
to an ever -growing puzzle. The possibility of it being a bunch of different people who may be committed a kidnapping of Karen in such a concentrated area can really mess with the community.
I know I'm often, I think I'm kind of hard on law enforcement in a lot of our cases and what we cover because You know, they are cold and missing cases and we do see a lot of mistakes, but I really appreciated the transparency of law enforcement here and their willingness to circle back, even to go back into that same community and ask questions again, interview people again, interview the sex offenders in that area. That
was a question that I wanted to ask you. Is that a normal response when there is... A child who goes missing that, you know, boots on the ground, we're going to go to these people first. Yeah, it is a pretty standard response. It really started probably like mid -90s, I think, you know, once the sex offender registry was created. published and then the law is really starting to get enforced. That's one thing that's talked about in this list is that the laws around the sex registry
offender list weren't really enforced. So they actually found a lot of people like out of compliance, not updating, you know, where they were living, their address, things like that. So that was actually found through this investigation quite a bit. Following law enforcement's timeline and just checklist of investigative work that they needed to do. I wanted to know if there was any follow -up of, you know, the report of the girl
crying in the grocery store. If there was, I know it was 96, but I was curious to know if there was maybe footage pulled from the grocery store just to see who that girl was. So from my understanding, there wasn't footage in this time in 1996. And police... I do believe tried to follow up with this lead, but it doesn't seem like they were ever able to really find the girl, find exactly who the girl was that was there. So this is like one lead that just kind of never
got resolved. Yeah, I think circling back to it for me is just wishful thinking. Could you bring us back to the moment where... small shoe prints were found. I just, I want to clarify some details there. So, you know, in the 24 hours following after Karen goes missing, a report comes in from the San Xavier Reservation Police that they found footprints on the reservation. They were small footprints and they were the
same brand of shoe that Karen was wearing. So when investigators got there and took a closer look at it, the shoe was half a size too big from what Karen wore, and the tread, the pattern on the bottom of the shoe, was different, slightly different than the pattern that was on the bottom of Karen's shoe that she was wearing. So ultimately,
the footprints are ruled out. Obviously, I am not a detective, not law enforcement, but the thought did cross my mind that maybe the The perpetrator had the thought to change the shoes. Now knowing more details about them being the same but just a little bit bigger, I guess to answer my own question or wrap up my own thought, if a shoe was going to be changed, it would probably be a completely different shoe. I didn't know if you... If you had any more thoughts or feelings
about those footprints. No, I had the same thing where I kept wanting to like come back to those footprints and be like, well, like what if her shoe was just a little bit bigger? But then I found additional reports that it was the same brand of shoe, but just the tread was different. So like you, I was like, OK, yeah, if somebody were to change shoes or even, you know, I don't know, your foot sliding around when you're walking or whatever, like. It would it would feel that
these would not be Karen. But if I remember correctly, they were next to like a set of adult footprints. So that was another reason that, you know, this was thought that it could be Karen. I feel kind of uncomfortable with what I want to say, but I think it's because I just don't like the reality of the sentence. But to me, Arizona. Just itself, like the state itself, the terrain, the weather, it seems like a good state, place, terrain to disappear someone if that's what you are trying
to do. I hate that my brain kind of went there. Yeah, Arizona is one of those states where you really have all sorts of terrain depending on where you are in the state. You know, up north is mountainous and, you know, we'll get snow and then more south is more desert. And, you know, it was January when this case took place, but Karen was, you know, in shorts and a t -shirt because it was warm outside. So you get, you know, the full kind of spectrum of weather in
Arizona. With that comes a lot of different terrain, and from my understanding, there's a lot of rural terrain. So I think there is a lot of space that's very difficult to search and very difficult to locate somebody. You know, it's hard just to find lost, like, hikers in the desert where you kind of know where their last location was, let alone just... Trying to find somebody, period. So, yeah, the desert is one of those spaces where
it's very easy to lose track of somebody. My brain is bouncing around quite a bit with this case, and I think it's the natural inclination is to try to solve it. But my last question for you about this case is about Karen's case. Do you think that it was Morales? It is very hard for me to rule him out as a suspect. You know, something that an investigator or maybe it was a prosecutor, I can't quite remember at the time.
But something that somebody said was that, like, these attempted abductions and this string of abductions that seemed to be happening stopped after Morales was arrested. So I think there's something to that. But, you know, he also doesn't fit. All the descriptions like, you know, one of the descriptions, it was a white guy. And, you know, in that unsolved murder there, they think that it was not somebody who was Hispanic. So there's just like a lot of moving pieces.
And I think he's a really good suspect in this case. And until I'm able to fully rule him out, I think I would keep him, you know, like in the suspect pool. And, you know, I. I hope that investigators continue to try to talk to him. You know, he's still in jail from my understanding. He's still serving time. So if he is responsible, hopefully we can get some answers someday. I think besides not knowing where Karen is, the unbearable heartbreak of this case is her mom and sisters at the center
of this experiencing a pregnancy. During this time, again, very palpable. I, you know, you can feel how she yearns for her daughter. Just an answer, a few answers, you know, you can feel the desperation. And I really hope that that desperation turns into justice and answers for this family. Some form of justice, which I think would, just be a little bit of knowledge. Yeah, Karen's family is still wanting answers in this case. They still want to know where she is, what
happened to her. So I would love for the family to get those answers and for Karen to come home in whatever way that looks like. You know, Karen should come home and her family should have answers. And I hope that we're able to get them in this case as you know, other cold cases get solved and more and more of them get closed, hopefully
we get more information on Karen. But again, if you know anything about the disappearance of Karen in January of 1996 or her whereabouts today, please call the Tucson Police Department at 520 -791 -4444. We will have pictures of Karen on our Instagram at coldandmissing and included in those pictures will be some aged progressed pictures of what she would look like into her 20s. So please check those out. Please share
them. Get Karen's name out there. Get her picture out there just in case anybody recognizes her and we could get some answers in this case. And please follow along if you're not at coldandmissing .com. We have all of our old episodes on there. You can rate and review us there. We also have transcripts. If you or someone you love is hard of hearing, you can find all those at our website, www .coldandmissing .com. And thank you so much to everyone who has rated and reviewed us this
week. I was able to just watch the reviews just kind of tick up and up and up and up. And it was so exciting to just see those reviews come in, to see these kind reviews come in. So thank you so much. You know, Apple Podcasts, it only understands subscribes, reviews, five stars. Give us a minute of your time and rate and review us. It helps others find our podcast. Same thing goes for Spotify, for Pandora, for everywhere
else you're listening. If you could rate us and review us, that's the only way that our little podcast gets to other listeners. Or if you share it with people in your life, that works too. So thank you if you've done it. Please do it again. I'm sorry I always have to end the podcast this way. But that is all I have for you this week. Thank you so much for listening to Cold and Missing. I'm Allie. And I'm Eli. Have a good week and stay safe, y 'all. Stay safe, y 'all.