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. And welcome back to me. Because I was gone last week, but feeling much better this week and very happy to be back. Back for our 100th episode officially. I can't believe that we've been doing this for as long as we have. It's kind of wild to look back on all of the work that has gone into doing this podcast and to see how many people it has reached. That it truly, you know, each time we release an episode, the podcast is doing exactly what it's supposed to be doing.
And that feels good and right. And I'm just so proud of you. Thanks. Just thank you to everyone who has been with us since the beginning or if you're just joining us. Thank you to everyone who's reviewed us recently. We've gotten like a big influx of reviews. So thank you, thank you, thank you so much for taking the time out of your day just to write us a couple of sentences or in some cases, long thoughtful paragraphs. Like so humbling. So thank you so much.
Like, it's so cool to hear from you all. So thank you. All right. Well, for the 100th episode, I think we should just jump into it. Let's do it. Today we are talking about the missing person case of Larissa Sam. And this takes place in June of 2015 in Indianapolis, Indiana. But first a little bit about Larissa. Larissa is 22 years old in 2015. According to her family and friends, she is a devoted mother to her four year old son. Larissa is smart.
When researching her case, she was in the newspaper a lot as a child for academic achievements. At this point in Larissa's life, she's a dancer at a club called the Classy Chassis in South Indianapolis. But she has dreams of leaving this job. She has her sights set on American Idol. She was headed to an audition for the show in just a few short days and was practicing singing and playing the guitar. Larissa actually uploaded some of her singing to YouTube and she's really talented.
I'll link Larissa's YouTube in the show notes so you can check it out for yourself. You'll be able to see her and hear her beautiful voice. Larissa has several notable tattoos. One of them being a very noticeable chest piece with candy and ice cream cones. The word princess is also worked into the piece and it goes shoulder to shoulder and is bright pink. And now, a timeline of events.
On Sunday, June 21st, 2015. Larissa is working the late Saturday night to early Sunday morning shift at the Classy Chassis. She left work around 1.30am Sunday morning and headed to her uncle's house to have a drink after work and practice playing the guitar and singing for her American Idol audition. The audition was scheduled in just two days on June 23rd. She was really looking forward to it and thought she had a really good shot.
At around 2.30am, Larissa posted on her Facebook, quote, I want to text someone. Texting buddy? And then she posted her phone number. According to her uncle, he fell asleep but when he woke up she had left the house already. She estimates that she left his house around 4.30am in the morning. She had been driving her 2006 gold Dodge Stratus. Larissa was supposed to pick up her son that morning from her grandmother's house. When Larissa fails to show up, the family is immediately worried.
It wasn't like her to not pick up her son when she said she would. She might be a few minutes late, but she was never a no-show. The family starts to call to hospitals to see if anyone matching her name or description was there. When that didn't turn up anything, they start calling around to jails to make sure she wasn't there either. That turned into a dead end as well. When no one in the family had still not heard from Larissa, the family decides to call the police and report her missing.
Police put out a bee on the lookout for Larissa and her gold 2006 Dodge Stratus. Within hours, her car is found. The car had been backed into the driveway of an abandoned house in the Mars Hill neighborhood. The car is found on the 2700 block of South Lyons Avenue. This is less than four miles from her uncle's house. As police began to look at the car, they noticed several things right off the bat. The car has a flat tire, and the front window is rolled down.
Inside the car, her keys are still in the ignition. It's also reported that at least one of Larissa's shoes was in the car, but possibly both of them. Larissa's wallet with her credit cards and the cash from her most recent shift were all found in the car untouched. Her cell phone was also there, but the SIM card was missing. Pretty quickly, police rule out robbery, since all of her cash and credit cards are found with her vehicle.
Police fan out through the neighborhood to look for clues, and the family also help in searching for any sign of Larissa. Police are able to get a break in the case. The house across the street from where Larissa's car was abandoned had security cameras that caught the car being dropped there. At around 5.01 a.m., the day that Larissa went missing, Larissa's car pulls into the driveway, then the car reverses, pulls forward, and then backs into the driveway.
Personally, I believe this was done to conceal the license plate. In Indiana, you don't need front plates on your vehicle. Once the car is parked, a man is seen running from the car. Family and friends of Larissa spend the next few days searching the neighborhood themselves, hanging missing person flyers and fielding tips. Her friend Savannah says, quote, She would never leave her son. People keep saying they've seen her. We don't know what's real and what's not. We just want her back.
End quote. Larissa's mother, Rebecca, spends her time helping the police. She fears for her daughter. Quote, I believe someone has kidnapped her. I do believe it's potentially someone she knows. I believe they have her drugged and my fear is they are using her to prostitution out for sex. End quote. She believes that whoever has her daughter is keeping her drugs because she would fight back to get to her family and son. The family begs for anyone with information to come forward.
Her mother says, quote, I just need her alive. Her son needs her alive. Just please someone if you know her whereabouts, please let us know. End quote. In late July of 2015, so Larissa has been missing for a month at this point. Her family holds a vigil to keep her name in the media and pleads to the public for information.
A few weeks before Larissa disappeared, she started going to church and the pastor of that church came to the vigil to lead everyone in prayer and encourage them not to give up hope. Larissa's family have been taking care of her son. They say that he knows his mom is lost, but there's lots and lots of people looking for her. It's unclear exactly when in the timeline, but the FBI do get involved in Larissa's case.
They get involved after someone on Facebook posted a demand suggesting that Larissa had been kidnapped and taken to another country. The FBI are able to run this lead down and according to agent Rothermitch, quote, we ran down all leads possible as far as the allegations we were receiving and determined it to be a fake lead. That it was an extortion attempt on the family. End quote.
Tips do seem to be coming into police, but there are no updates on what specifically they're doing in Larissa's case. It takes almost six months for her name to appear in the paper again, but it happens in December of 2015. So Larissa has been missing for six months and on what should have been her 23rd birthday, friends and family gathered to remember her and celebrate her.
Her mother has been doing everything to keep her daughter's face and name in front of the public, hanging flyers, starting a Facebook page. Her mother firmly believes that she is alive. It does seem that police are asking the family and friends for help. When newspaper reports that the family and friends of Larissa had sifted through police reports, anonymous tips and leads from strangers, all in an effort to help police. After this, however, the case appears to go cold.
The next update comes in December of 2016, near what should have been her 24th birthday and Larissa has been missing for a year and a half. Police reveal that they were able to get DNA evidence from her vehicle. It appears that police are going back to some of the people they originally interviewed and asked for DNA samples to compare.
It's unclear if everyone complies and gives DNA or if police are able to get the DNA through warrants, but no results from that DNA testing and comparison have ever been revealed. Police remain hopeful that Larissa is still alive. They point to the fact that they have no evidence that she's dead, but police also do not believe that this was a stranger abduction. In April of 2017, so it's been almost two years since Larissa vanished, and her mother hangs on to hope.
She says, quote, I'll never give up hope. To give up hope would just be to give up on everything. I'll look until my last dying breath, end quote. We do know that as of 2017, the FBI are still involved in Larissa's case. A special agent assigned to the case says, quote, we've talked to many people and many different leads, but still at this point, no resolution as far as what happened that night, end quote. The FBI do say that they have ruled out several possibilities in the case.
They say there is no evidence that anyone she met at the classy chassis could have been involved in her disappearance, and no one that responded to her Facebook post about wanting a texting buddy was involved either. The FBI also say that they have ruled out the possibility that Larissa was taken into a sex trafficking operation and ruled out several suspects from her personal life.
The FBI says, quote, we're involving Quantico in a lot of evidence we've since recovered as well as interview and searches. I hope she's still alive, end quote. But that is all we know about the disappearance of Larissa Sam. So if you know anything about the disappearance of Larissa Sam in June of 2015 or her whereabouts today, please call the FBI Indianapolis office at 317-595-400 or the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department Missing Persons Unit at 317-327-6160.
So that is the case of Larissa Sam. I found myself immediately gravitating towards her story, mostly because she's a young artist and was working really hard to make her dreams come true. And also when you started speaking about her tattoos, something that I just immediately wrote down was tattoos tell stories and she should get to continue to tell hers, alongside them being, you know, forms of self-expression.
And I don't know, immediately I just could really see who she was and felt for what she was trying to do with her life. Yeah. She was getting ready to audition for American Idol, which in 2015 was still going really strong. And after hearing her sing, I'm like, she definitely had a shot at it, I think for sure. I know there's hundreds, if not thousands of really good singers that never made it on American Idol for one reason or the other, but she wasn't lacking in the talent department.
So that wasn't holding her back. She's very good. That was the second thing that I wrote down was she did have a shot. I know I've only heard just a little bit of her singing kind of in the background while you were doing research, but I remember that moment with you and, you know, asking who's singing right now. She absolutely had a shot and I think, you know, I think she still does, especially if she's still out there, which I'm really hoping is the case.
Yeah, that kind of brings us into her disappearance overall. It's the case, like there's so many details, like, and we have the surveillance footage, but police have never released images from that surveillance footage, so we never see the guy running away, but they've always been very clear that it is a man running away from the car. So, but there's no descriptors beyond that, no hair color, no height, no clothing description.
So that's like one thing that's a big mystery, but it seems like police do have that information. A question that I asked myself and wrote down was, was it someone she knew? And I know that they have done quite a bit of ruling out of suspects, but that still doesn't mean that it wasn't someone that she knew. Yeah, the FBI and the police have said that they do not believe it's a stranger abduction here, that it would be somebody who knew Larissa in her day to day.
But yeah, like you said, a lot has been ruled out, like none of the, like people, like the patrons at the club she worked at, like none of them seemed to be involved ruling out lots of people in her personal life, nobody that responded or interacted with her Facebook message that night, but the flat tire is a big question on the car. Is that an accident that happens? Sometimes you get a flat tire or was that something that was done on purpose to her car to make her have to pull over?
I would be interested as to what caused the flat, like, because you can tell if someone slashes your tire versus you run over a nail. I'd be curious what the result of that was, what made the tire flat. More about the car, I also wrote down, even though we don't have a visual of the footage, to me it seems like the decision to do that was made in the moment.
So it wasn't, to me it seems like it wasn't someone who was very practiced in doing something like this and also someone running from the car afterwards. It doesn't seem super planned out to me. Yeah, according to those who have seen the security footage, the car pulls in, then pulls out and then backs in to the driveway.
So there's definitely like a thought process there happening to that person that's driving it of like, you know, you're right there, you got the car pulled in, he could get out and run, but he takes, you know, that extra few seconds, minute to back the car in. So it does seem like something that's made in the moment or was thought about, but like, you're fumbling and you're like, oh, shit, I need to reverse it. I was going to reverse the car. So yeah, lots of questions.
And then the front window was also rolled down as well. And I wonder if that was Larissa who rolled it down? Like she got a flat tire. Did somebody drive up and she rolled down the window to talk to them? Like there's questions like who rolled down the window? Why did they roll it down? You know, was the seat moved from where Larissa would normally have it? You know, those are all questions that I'm sure police do have answers since, you know, they found the car pretty quickly.
But yeah, I would really love to know those additional details about the car. I know you said the area where she was from, but I didn't, I guess I would like to know was this a small townish area within Indianapolis, like a, just a, you know, small pocket of an area. I'm also interested to know because how the family was canvassing the area and searching on their own. I just wanted to get a better mindset of where and how they were looking.
Yeah. The Mars Hill neighborhood is on the southwest side of Indianapolis, if you're kind of looking at it on a map. And it's a really residential part of the city. So it's just like street after street of houses. And for the most part, like all the houses have yards. So it's not as jam packed as, you know, a New York or Chicago where the houses are kind of right on top of each other, but everyone has a lawn, a front lawn, a back lawn, like a little bit of room to the side.
So it's a nice neighborhood spread. One thing that you said in the middle of telling us her story was that she had joined a church or a place of worship just a couple of weeks before her disappearance. And I'm just interested to know what the crowd is like in that place, who were some of the new people that met her. It's an interesting step to take in your life and then for you to disappear right after. I could just be looking for ways to correlate the story. But I don't know.
I was interested when you, my ears perked up even more. I was curious about her relationship with this new place and the people there. Yeah, I don't have too many details about the church or like what brought Larissa to the church. But I also thought that her kind of making this change in her life just a few weeks before she disappeared. I mean, that's something to always take note of for missing people.
Changes happening in the weeks leading up to it could be clues, could be signals, could tell you something. So I think it is noticeable, you know, starting to go to a new church, possibly even bringing her son with her. So it's all part of the puzzle, but you never know exactly what pieces you need in the puzzle until you kind of know the end game. Yeah, her, her son.
I know we haven't talked about him much and I don't really want to mostly just with respect to him and to the family, but my heart just really feels for him. He deserves to have memories of his mother. Yeah, he is a victim in this as well. Missing his mother and not having those answers and not knowing what happened, like that's trauma and yeah, my heart really goes out to him. To Larissa's entire family who have to carry this and have it be part of the reality. It's not fair.
It's not fair to any of them that this is part of the reality and it's not fair that somebody like caused this. Larissa didn't pick up and go by her own choice. That much like also seems pretty clear too, based off of everything that the FBI has said. So somebody did this to not only Larissa, but her whole family.
And hopefully by talking about her, getting her name out there, somebody just remember something or has heard something over the years and they're ready to come forward and get it off their chest and help Larissa's family find peace and answers that they're looking for. I think that it's very beautiful and also, you know, just heartbreaking that her mother refuses to let her hope dwindle. She deserves to feel all of that love that her family, that these people have for her.
I really hope that they find her. Yeah, I hope Larissa gets to come home and the family gets a happy reunion. And I think it's also really hopeful that like, we'll get answers in this case, specifically because the FBI, they have the DNA.
So they have the DNA of someone and whether they've been able to match that to somebody and they just need a little bit more evidence to bring a case or if once that match hits in CODIS or wherever, whenever it does, like Larissa's family will get answers and we'll get to bring her home.
So with that, again, if you know anything about the disappearance of Larissa Sam in June of 2015 or her whereabouts today, please call the FBI Indianapolis office at 317-595-400 or the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department Missing Person Unit at 317-327-6160. And again, in our show notes, we'll have the link to Larissa's YouTube so you all can hear what we've heard and hear her beautiful voice and just kind of get to sit with her this week. I hope you check it out.
We'll also have pictures of her on our Instagram at Cold and Missing. Please follow us there if you're not already. We always post updates about the podcast, about other cases, current cases happening that we're not covering. So it's a really good true crime, missing person, cold case updates profile to just kind of like add to your feed. And I know I said it at the top, but thank you, thank you, thank you to everyone who rated and reviewed us this week.
It was so cool to like see someone following us on Instagram and then leaving a review. Like it's really cool to see those connections. So thank you for doing that. Thank you for the kind words and the encouragement. And also on our YouTube, thank you so much to everyone who comments and discusses the case in the comments. It's always really cool to like read and listen to the conversations happening. So thank you.
And if you or someone you love is hard of hearing, we have transcripts on our website, www.coldandmissing.com where you can find this episode and the 99 others that we've done so far. They're all up there. They can, you can sort them by state. You can find what you're looking for. So be sure to check it out there. But that is all I have. Thank you so much for being with Cold and Missing for 100 episodes. Thank you for being here for the 100th episode.
Whether you listen when we drop it or you find it later, you're listening at the right time. So thank you. I'm your host, Allie. And I'm your cohost, Eli. Have a good week and stay safe, y'all. Stay safe, y'all.