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.
We are on part two of episode 86 this week, which I guess would be episode 87, right? I am, I've been looking forward to this second part since we did the last episode. I'm hoping our listeners are right there with me. Yeah, I say let's just get into it. Let's do it. So again, just as a content warning, this case does involve a young person.
So just as a quick recap to remind you all where we are, if you are new to Cold and Missing, stop here and go back and listen to last week's episode to get all caught up as this is a part two, but if you listened last week, here's just a quick little reminder of where we are in the timeline. Six-year-old Regina Armstrong was abducted from behind her babysitter's apartment while playing barefoot in a green dress with blue flowers.
Something new that I actually learned this week was that it was Regina and her sister second time at the babysitter's. They had just started going there the day before the abduction. While playing, a man approached her, her older sister, and another child, and offered the older children money to watch an apartment while he took Regina to pick up his grandkids.
Despite the children raising the alarm, police weren't alerted until 90 minutes later, and then a huge search was launched for Regina in central Florida. Almost overnight, Orlando was wallpapered with Regina's missing person poster and the composite sketch of the suspect. Over the next few weeks, police will search block by block for any sign of Regina while the tip line keeps getting reports of the man being spotted all around town.
Regina's family are desperate to get her back and are very hopeful that she is still alive. They believe that since they have not found her dead, that there's a chance she's being kept alive by her abductor. This is later fueled when a reported sighting of the suspect involved him asking a Popeye's employee to open a can of ravioli, Regina's favorite food. So now we are back in the timeline.
So we're just a few days after Regina's abduction, and a delivery man comes forward to police to tell them that he believes he has also seen Regina. He believes he saw her the morning after her abduction. He was driving the back roads of Orlando and was lost when he saw a brown Oldsmobile with two people asleep inside. When he knocked on the window to ask for directions, the little girl in the back seat sat up and started to cry.
The man sleeping in the front seat quickly started the car and sped off. Later, the delivery man will see the missing person poster and remember the strange interaction he had on the back road. On July 7, 1985, Regina has been missing for just shy of three weeks at this point. Friends and family of Regina publish a letter in the newspaper appealing to Regina's captor. It's clear that they're trying to reach his humanity. I won't read the whole thing, but I do want to read part of it.
It says, quote, Regina probably has become precious to you. And as strange as this may seem to some, we know you have grown to love her in some of the ways we do. We don't know why you took her. We only know that her absence has left a terrible emptiness in our lives. What we have heard and read in the news reports has convinced us that you are a different kind of abductor. And because of your good side, you were smart enough to know that no good can come from taking someone else's child.
We beg you to reconsider what you've done. To be the man we know you can be. Here's how. Take Regina to a safe and busy place, perhaps early in the morning. Leave her there with instructions to wait a certain amount of time before asking the nearest adult to contact her parents. While many people would like to be the hero of the story, you are the only one who really can. Please, please keep her safe. Let her go and be on your way. Allow all our lives to return to normal.
You don't want thousands of strangers looking for you and Regina for years, as we surely would do. Again, thank you for giving us reason to believe you're a good person who will release her. Regina took a long time coming to us, but she's worth a lifetime of working to get back. End quote. On July 14th, this is approaching one month of Regina's abduction. Police start to pull detectives off the case. The case is going from about 35 to 40 detectives working full time to around 16.
Detectives are busy interviewing all sex offenders in the area, and they're also interviewing kidnappers recently released from prison to check on their alibis. They're also checking court records to see if anyone matching the suspect's description had lost custody of his children recently. Police haven't had a solid lead in two weeks. However, Orlando police are encouraged that they can still find her alive.
Detective Wade says, quote, But we have to remember that it's gone six weeks now, and she hasn't turned up dead. That means there's a good chance she's alive and she's safe with the man. If that's so, then she'll stay safe. End quote. Suddenly, the tip line is lighting up again with possible sightings for Regina and the suspect. This happens during the first week of August.
It's about six weeks from the time Regina was kidnapped, but police received several tips placing Regina and the man in Los Angeles. Police are hopeful because several callers say the little girl is wearing a blue and green flowered sundress, the same description of the clothes Regina was abducted in. Additionally, callers say the girl is barefoot and we know that Regina was too at the time of her abduction.
Witnesses keep seeing the girl and the man resembling the suspect in fast food restaurants in the same area of LA. The LAPD begins to search the area for the pair and Regina's parents fly to LA just hours after police alert them that there has been a break in the case. Her mother, Donna says, quote, This is the first positive thing we've had in so long that I don't know how to take it. The waiting has been so bad. This has got to be her. End quote.
As LAPD scour the area, more and more witnesses recognize Regina's presence. LAPD decide to stake out the area where they're getting the most witnesses. Plane closed officers spend the day in and out of fast food places, riding the bus, walking around parks. Police are convinced that Regina is in the area since people who are unfamiliar with the case described her and her dress so perfectly.
Additionally, witnesses say that the girl looks scared and the man stops other people from talking to her. The LAPD is also looking for evidence that Regina was abducted in Los Angeles. Police also found that Regina was in the area when people were trying to stop other people from talking to her. A witness at the donut shop said she served the little girl Regina's favorite kind of donut. On Wednesday, August 7th, police are able to locate the young girl in LA. It's not Regina.
Police found her and her father sitting at a bus stop. Police brought them in for questioning. However, the LAPD and Orlando police all agree that the little girl in LA looks similar to the composite sketch. Police aren't surprised that the two were confused for Regina and her abductor. Regina's parents are crushed. Her dad, Bob, says, quote, it's disappointed us, that's for sure. But I don't want to go home until they tell us for sure there's no hope.
There's still too many coincidences for us to think she wasn't even here. End quote. Donna and Bob stay in LA a few extra days to continue to search and hand out flyers. But eventually they'll head back to Orlando, heartbroken that they're not bringing Regina home with them. Regina's case is on a time crunch with police. If they're not able to develop significant leads in the next month, then police will have to reduce the amount of detectives working it.
Another false alarm will raise hope in Regina's family and the community. A security guard finds a man and a young girl experiencing houselessness. The man said that he didn't have a job and didn't have anywhere to take his daughter. The security guard was suspicious of the circumstances and worried about the little girl. So he offered to take them to his apartment. At some point, the little girl is left with the security guard's wife while the man is driven back to the park.
As soon as the two men leave, the little girl tells the security guard's wife that she is Regina Armstrong. The woman immediately calls police who show up and begin to question the young girl. They interview her for hours and they even go as far as to fingerprint her to compare them to a set they have of Regina's. And they're not a match. The little girl is only four years old, but she did have a strange knowledge of Regina's case. Sergeant Tom Langford says, quote, it was really strange.
The girl sounded so rehearsed and she knew so much about the Armstrong case. Even after we had determined that she was not the missing girl, she still said her name was Regina Mae Armstrong. I don't know if it was a publicity stunt or what. End quote. The summer continues to march on and every single day without a lead, more and more detectives are pulled off the case. Finally, by September, just over two months since Regina was abducted, only two detectives remain on the case.
On March 16th, 1986, Regina's seventh birthday comes and goes and her family misses her every day. But they feel the absence of her extra on her very special day. In June of 1986, it's been a year that Regina has been missing. Her dad, Bob says, quote, in a way, it seems like forever. And in another way, it seems like yesterday. Everything that happened on June 18th was so vivid in our minds. But when you think about how long she has not been here, it seems like a lifetime.
I would love to see her. I would probably squeeze her so tight. I would knock the wind out of her. I would give my life to see her again and hear her voice. That will be a miracle. I would never want anything else in life. End quote. Police feel that they are at a standstill with the case. Detective Wait says, quote, the only way we're going to solve this case is because somebody out there knows this man or he is talking to somebody.
It is going to be the public who gives us information and it will be up to us to follow up on the information and find her. End quote. Police have boxes and boxes of files and interviews, but they truly have not developed any credible leads since the day that Regina was kidnapped. Regina's family still believe that she is alive, but are faced with the reality that she could be gone. Her dad had this message, quote, I just want her to remember that we are still thinking about her.
If she is gone, I want to know she is. It takes a pretty low person to do what this person has done. If he has taken her life, he should have the decency to call us. If he has taken her life, he got what he wanted and he ought to let us have what we wanted. End quote. The rest of 1986 ends without any updates about Regina and 1987 comes and goes with more of the same. Finally, in July of 1988, Regina has been missing for three years now.
Her mother, Donna, is called into a police station to identify a dirty flowered dress, the same one that Regina had been wearing the day she was abducted. With the dress was the skull of a small child. When Donna positively ID the dress as Regina's, police will sign Regina's death certificate. How we got to this point is that the dress was found almost 10 months before this.
What had happened was in September of 1987, construction workers stumbled upon the skull and dress in an Ovadio subdivision that was being built. The chief of police at that time, Robert Wayne Hancock responded to the call. A crime scene unit arrived on the scene to collect the skull and dress as evidence. The scene was photographed and the surrounding area was searched as well. No other bones were found near the skull or dress. Police do have the skull and dress.
The skull belonged to a young girl who was five to seven years old. She figured that the child had been dead no more than three years. While these measures were taken initially by police, after this, there is no attempt to ID the skull internally by the police department. According to reports, those that knew about the skull and dress speculated that it could be Regina, but no one thought to notify or report that it could be Regina.
Chief Hancock will blame the investigator of his department, who, just as a note, has a very bizarre name. The investigator, Sparky Dingess, points the blame back at Chief Hancock. A few weeks after the skull is found, Chief Hancock is fired. According to reports, he failed to investigate two murders, falsified timesheets and purchase orders, and was arrested on the spot.
He also showed up two and a half hours late to a drug raid and never looked into an incident where someone was smoking cannabis in the dispatch room. A new police chief takes over and investigator Dingess asks for money to run tests on the dress. When the new police chief hears about the dress, he immediately connects it to Regina's case and contacts Orlando police. That same week is when Donna is called in to ID the dress.
Officials are shocked that her dress and skull had been sitting in an evidence locker for months without answers. A state attorney said, quote, this is the most incompetent piece of policework I've seen in my 20 years in this business. End quote.
The city of Oviedo officials said, quote, I'm really saddened and sickened that we may have had the answers for those parents for almost a year and could have been the answers for the parents of the parents of the parents of those parents for almost a year and couldn't get to the point of relieving their anguish. Apologizing to them for what our police department failed to do is all we could do. End quote. Investigators in Regina's case are unable to determine much from the skull.
It had been sitting in the Florida sun and had been bleached out. They couldn't tell precisely how long it had been out there or what the manner of death was. Police will go back and search the area where the skull and dress were found. But after months of construction, those who live near the area doubted that police would be able to find anything after everything had been plowed and bulldozed.
Police will eventually decide not to excavate the land where Regina's skull was found since the chances of finding more evidence seems slim. Police do believe that she was put there shortly after her abduction in 1985. At that time, the area was rural and only dirt roads ran through the area. Police believe that because of this, the suspect was likely a resident of central Florida and would have known his way around the back roads.
Also, the fact that Regina was still found in the state of Florida leads them to believe that her abductor is also a resident of Florida. While a firm idea of the skull is never truly determined, genetic testing at that time in the 1980s proved fruitless since the skull had sat out in the sun and rained for too long. Any genetic material in the teeth had disappeared and no dental records were available. However, police do believe that it is Regina.
Eventually, after a few months, they'll turn the skull over to the family after the testing is done so they can hold a funeral service for her. The years come and go. Regina's family files lawsuits against the police and against a news station for broadcasting a picture of her skull on TV. On her 21st birthday, in March of 2000, her dad writes a letter to her in the paper. It says, quote, honey, today you would have turned 21. It's been a hard 15 years since you were stolen away from us.
Although the person responsible for your death has never been caught, God will deal with him soon. Until daddy gets to see you again, you be the best little angel in God's kingdom. You are safe there. God will see to this. End quote. In July of 2007, Orlando police announced that they're reopening the case. They plan to have the dress tested for DNA to hopefully help identify a suspect. But as of 2024, no suspect has ever been developed from the DNA.
Police believe that their best chance at cracking the case is someone comes forward with information or DNA technology advances. But that is all we know about the abduction and murder of Regina. May Armstrong. Again, if you have any information about Regina's case, please call Crime Line at 1-800-423-8477. And the sources for the timeline today come from the Orlando Sentinel and Pensacola News Journal. So that is the full case of Regina Armstrong. I did it to myself like I always do.
But I imagine that other people's minds do the same thing. Even when you know it's a cold case, I kept hoping for a different outcome. Even already knowing the outcome. So like holding that and, you know, kind of breaking my own heart while listening is just a small tiny fraction of what this family so clearly went through and continues to go through.
Listening to Regina's parents plead with someone who is incapable of choosing to do the right thing is just, it was devastating to listen to you just quote what he was saying. Yeah, that letter that was in the newspaper pleading to the abductor was one of the most heartbreaking things that I've ever read. It was so clear. How much they wanted to like reach out and like try to touch the humanity in this person and like plead to whatever good that they might have had in them.
And you know, they really, the family really did do everything that they could do and everything in their power to try to bring Regina home. You know, perpetrators like this, they leave such a wake in the violence that they create. And the extra heartbreaking thing is that most of the time they are very incapable of understanding that they are creating that heartbreak and they don't care.
You know, we could go on and on about that, but just, you know, I send so much love to the family still to kind of pivot a little bit. I think it's a little shady that it was only the second time these kids had been with this babysitter and maybe I'm grasping at straws, but I don't know. I don't like it. So I just wanted to talk about it with you.
Yeah, learning that detail I thought was kind of striking because initially I had maybe thought that the kids were in a bit of a routine and maybe somebody in the neighborhood was the kids were in a bit of a routine and maybe somebody in the neighborhood had noticed and was watching and knew the kids would be outside playing in the afternoon because that's what they had done day after day after day after day and with minimal supervision.
But learning that that was only their second time there feels chaotic in a lot of ways. Like, was this just a completely random opportunity or is there something else going on there? Police have never charged the babysitter with anything or the babysitter was never, you know, charged with any crimes related to Regina's disappearance.
I also just have to like, wonder what the hell was happening in central Florida during this time because I wasn't able to mention it in the timeline today, but there were two additional abductions of children where the description very closely matched Regina's abductor and one of the circumstances eerily resembled Regina's abduction where two sisters were playing outside in a parking lot of their apartment building and a man approached them asking if they wanted to
see some puppies and the girl was taken. She is later dropped off about 32 hours later in a random parking lot. She's still alive, but there's all of these things and then in our last episode we talked about the Cocoa Beach so it's just like what? Police don't connect these but there's obviously something happening where the same description of the man is seen over and over, either breaking into people's homes or walking up to children and walking away with them.
It just seems wild to think that there are multiple people doing that as opposed to maybe one or two people doing that during this time frame. I don't know if statistics support that but it just seems like statistically there would maybe only be one or two people doing this as opposed to five different abductors which I think is what it would be. Yeah, that's a lot of movement, that's a lot of abductions, there are a lot of like amber
alerts. I don't know if that existed at the time but you know I imagine if it was multiple people it would have been creating some noise at least in media. Just as a side note amber alerts weren't introduced till 1996 so those wouldn't have happened at this time. Something that I think was while even if it was well intended, I mean impact over intent, you know, I don't think it was right
for law enforcement to create any sense of false hope for this family. Specifically around them saying that she might still be alive and safe with this person and I immediately wrote down as I was listening to that is I will never assume that a loved one of mine is safe with a man that I don't know. You know so to operate with that kind of mindset as law enforcement it's like you one you should know better, two don't be saying anything like that to the family and I just like don't
really understand the lack of transparency and honesty there. I did think that as I was researching but I think what police maybe just didn't know are the statistics that we have today. The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children was really in its infancy at this point.
Adam Walsh was murdered in 1981 I believe so John Walsh was pretty integral with the family. He was a big support to them and even he was saying you know after a few weeks that maybe it is possible that she's alive because they haven't found her and at that point police believed that they would find the body within so many miles of where she was abducted because that's what history
had shown them. They didn't really have all the data that we have today and police are more forthcoming with their information and their data and their statistics so that way nationwide we can have a better understanding of child abductions and what the statistics are. So I do agree that I think there was a lot of false hope given to the family but I think at that time it is genuinely what they believed that there was a shot that it could happen. I think you're right and I
will you know I'm always willing to table my my judgment and learn and unlearn. As you were speaking it just also occurred to me that like yeah like maybe in this area something is wrong
like this had never happened so what else are you going to say? It's just as easy for me to sit here and you know make judgment calls on how people behaved at the time but it's a lot easier for me to try to break down the understanding of the mindsets at the time and that you're absolutely right there could have been a hundred percent earnestness in them saying something like that and I understand that too. I just want to swing over to the sighting in LA really quick which is
across the country. I mean I that was my jaw was kind of hanging open because of all of the information around that but you know the girl being four it happening at random the Regina's family going out there I don't know if that was all maybe if I'm completing a couple things. No the only detail is the four-year-old was the other girl who later would say that she was Regina
Mae Armstrong and had all of the knowledge of the case. She was the four-year-old I do believe the girl in LA was around the same age as Regina would have been but police were not surprised when they found the father and daughter in LA because they both looked shockingly like Regina and like the
composite sketch so it was a really easy error to make. Yeah that makes sense to me and I'm remembering correctly now that they were two separate incidences but still just I don't know the wild things that people can do because clearly this girl was taught to say and echo these things that she was probably told for whatever reason I do not understand why. I'm so sad it happened I'm sad it happened to that girl I'm sad it you know raised some hope up in
the family but a bizarre moment in the case. Totally and then of course the finding of her dress and her skull that's like really that police their reaction to it of being really slow in trying to figure out who the dress belonged to who the skull belonged to I just thought that this case kind of shows two police reactions the Orlando police you know when she was abducted they pull out all the stops they search for weeks they have 40 detectives on the case for a month they really do kind of
everything in their power you know that they're able to do a great response but then you have this other police department that really drags their feet doesn't really put it as a priority doesn't talk to other police departments and it just shows that they're not really doing anything wrong. It really is about the people who are doing the job and if people don't want to be doing the job a
lot of things are going to slip through the cracks. Yeah it's a little difficult I'm still kind of processing the even though I knew Regina was murdered I didn't really know how and I didn't know the details and now that I do it just feels so crass to say but like I don't understand how you find a part of someone's head that's like very clearly a child's size and every part of you doesn't move into action so I think I'm just gonna kind of reflect on you know knowing this very horrific
information about what Regina's abductor did to her but I um I'm so sorry to the family that they
that the the finding of of their little girl is just a piece of her. You know my future hopes for this case is really that DNA advances they last tried to test I believe in 2007 we've had a lot of advances in DNA technology since then so I am hopeful that the Orlando police will maybe make a decision in the future to retest obviously you don't want to do it too soon because you only have so much material to use so I know that sometimes you have to be strategic with the
advancements in technology but I do hope that they are able to pull DNA evidence that maybe there's a matching CODIS or it can lead to an identity and Regina's killer will have to face
some justice in this and have to answer for what they've done. Definitely if this person is still out there they have got plenty of time to uh to pay for what they did you know they're they've got some years left on them and I would imagine that whoever knows anything about this still has time left on their lives as well so I really hope that if they know anything they come forward because again and we said it last in last week's episode Regina's case
is completely solvable. Completely we have a very good composite sketch people talk it is very
solvable. We'll be posting some pictures of Regina on our Instagram so if you're not following us please check us out there also thank you to all the new reviews that came in this week we appreciate it so much if you have time maybe before you go to your next podcast if you could leave us a written review an apple podcast that would be so great it helps other people find our podcast and give it a chance and who knows maybe the person who will give us a chance is somebody who knows something
about Regina so thank you for helping us get these cases out there. We also have transcripts of all our podcast cases at www.coldandmissing.com. If you or your loved one is hard of hearing you can follow along there with our transcripts. That's all I have 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