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, Ali McLaughlin-Sulkowski, and it will just be me this week. My darling husband, Eli, is out running Christmas errands right now. So while he's doing that, I thought I would take advantage of the quiet house and bring you a new episode of Cold and Missing. So just to get right into things, this week we are covering a missing person case. And just as a bit of a content warning, this case does involve young people. There are mentions of sexual assault and death by suicide.
So this week on Cold and Missing, we are going to review the Thompson family disappearance. And this happens in July of 1996 in Chicago, Illinois. So first, a little bit about the Thompson family. Everett Thompson is 40 years old in 1996. His wife, Lydia, is 43 years old. And their two sons, Everett Jr., is 11 years old, and Andrew is 8 years old. The Thompson family live in the Chatham neighborhood in Chicago, Illinois, which is on the south side.
They have two young sons, as I mentioned, Everett Jr. and Andrew. Everett Sr. and Lydia were married in 1982 after Everett moved to the area to work at the nearby steel mills. Originally, Everett is from Philadelphia, but he still talked with his parents all the time who were back home in Philly. Everett and Lydia had taken a chance and started a restaurant called EAT & Co. The word EAT is Everett's initials, Everett Andrew Thompson.
He was the head cook there, and cooking was a passion of his. Lydia had inherited the Chatham home from her parents after they passed away. She owned one-third of it with her two other siblings, Kenneth and Phyllis. In February of 1996, so just a few months before the family goes missing, Lydia's brother Kenneth was released from prison and he came to stay with the family at the home. This quickly causes tension in the household.
Kenneth felt annoyed that he had to share a house that he believed was his and his alone with his sister and her family, and Everett's family believed that Kenneth was a freeloading house guest, quote unquote. Arguments would break out in the home frequently. And now a timeline of events. On July 3rd, 1996, Lydia calls the police because Kenneth is out of hand. She tells the police that her brother is chasing her around with an axe threatening to kill her.
Police arrive at the home, but no arrests are made since things appear to have calmed down. The police do enter the home to have a look around, but everything is in its place and nothing seems out of the ordinary, so they go ahead and leave the family alone for the night since things do seem to have cooled down. But two days later, July 5th, 1996, Everett is working at EAT & Co. While at work, he was talking with his father on the phone.
His father, Herman Thompson, wants to know when he's bringing the family to Philadelphia so he can see his grandbabies. Everett promises that as soon as he can get away from work, he'll bring the family out for a visit. While talking on the phone, Everett gets a phone call from his wife on the other line. When he answers the phone, Lydia is frantic. She is home with her boys and Kenneth is, once again, chasing her around with an axe.
According to Herman, Everett jumps back on the line and says, quote, I gotta go home right away, Dad. Lydia's brother is chasing her around the house with an axe. She locked herself in the bedroom and called me to come home. End quote. Everett quickly hangs up with his dad and then tells the manager on duty that he's leaving to go home. Employees of the restaurant see Everett leave in a hurry in the family van. This is the last time that anyone sees or talks to Everett.
However, about two hours after Everett leaves, Kenneth arrives at the restaurant driving the family van. He tells the manager on duty that Everett was arrested after a car accident. The manager notices that Kenneth is wearing white shoes and there's blood on them. Over the next several days, Herman tries to get in contact with his son but is unable to reach him. He calls the family home. He calls the restaurant. But nobody has heard from Everett, Lydia, Everett Jr., or Andrew.
Finally, on July 17th, 1996, 12 days since Everett hurried off the phone with his father, Herman calls the Chicago police and asks that they do a welfare check on the family. Police stop by the Thompson home and Kenneth tells police that the family went on vacation to either Pennsylvania or Minnesota, but they drove the family van there. Since the family van is also missing from the home at this time, police believe the story and go ahead and leave. Kenneth's story keeps changing, however.
He tells folks that the family drove to Philly, and then he tells some people that they caught a bus to Minnesota, and then he tells others that they flew to Hawaii. At some point, it's unclear exactly when this happens, but Kenneth is pulled over while driving the family van. Chicago police do not put two and two together and realize that by Kenneth driving the van, he is contradicting his own story that he told the police that the Thompson family had driven to Philadelphia or maybe Minnesota.
Herman and Erling Thompson, that's Everett's parents, continue to worry about their son and his family and decide to take matters into their own hands. In late July of 1996, the two drive from Philly to Chicago to search for the family themselves. They stop by the EAT & Co. restaurant and talk with employees and learn that Everett has not come back since he left after the frantic phone call from Lydia.
They also hear the manager's story of Kenneth showing up in the family van with blood on his shoes and they call the police. The family begs the police to investigate the Thompson's disappearance further. As police check out the story that Kenneth told the EAT & Co. manager, they find no record of an automobile accident or an arrest record for Everett.
Again, it's unclear when police discover these facts or when exactly they took place, but police do figure out that Kenneth has sold the family van to a scrap yard where it was immediately crushed so police are unable to examine the car. And additionally, Kenneth forged his sister's signatures to sell the home that they all had inherited, the house where the Thompson's were living.
By the time police catch up to the illegal sale of the home, the new owners have taken ownership of the home and gutted the interior. Lieutenant Robert Hargishmeyer says, quote, any evidence of foul play that might have been in the house was now lost, end quote. They do find the inspector's notes that happened before the sale went through. The inspector noted that the kitchen floor had been ripped out and a bathtub and toilet had been painted red.
When police visited the home on July 3rd, after Lydia called the police the first time for Kenneth chasing her with an axe, the responding officers had walked through the home and said that the kitchen floor was intact and that there were no red bathroom fixtures. So this all happened after July 3rd and presumably after the Thompson's went missing. Kenneth White, Lydia's brother, is the prime suspect in the disappearance of the Thompson's.
But despite the illegal sale of the home and the family van, police do not arrest him. On July 14th, 1997, a year after the Thompson family was last seen, police and FBI searched the trailer that he was living in in Gary, Indiana, which is about an hour and 15 minutes outside of Chicago. Cadaver dogs are brought in to search the property and investigators find men's gym shorts and a boy's sock. Both are soaked in blood.
Still, no arrest is made until November 1997 when they arrest Kenneth for a probation violation for failure to register as a sex offender. In December of 1997, the FBI arrests Kenneth for forging Lydia's signature on a check for $13,272. While being held in the Federal Metropolitan Correctional Center in downtown Chicago, Kenneth dies by suicide. No note was left, but the cause of death was self-inflicted.
Lieutenant Robert Hargishmeyer says, quote, We believe he had a lot to do with their disappearance. Now that he is dead, it is our hope that people who knew him in prison as well on the outside will come forward with answers. Lieutenant Hargishmeyer continues to say, quote, If there was foul play, and we think there was, it happened on July 4th, 5th, or 6th, 1996. No one saw the Thompson family after that time, and Kenneth was seen driving the Thompson van soon after that weekend.
The enormity of an entire family of four people missing, under dread circumstances, demands a continued police presence and review. End quote. However, after Kenneth's death, I could not find any updates that the Chicago police or the FBI have done any additional searching to recover the bodies of the Thompson family.
We do know that none of their social security numbers have been used, and Everett and Lydia's credit cards and bank cards were not used except when Kenneth attempted to forge checks in Lydia's name. So with that, if you know anything about the disappearance of the Thompson family, Everett, Lydia, Everett Jr., and Andrew, or their whereabouts today, please call the Area South Chicago Police Department at 312-747-5789.
And the sources for today's timeline come from the Chicago Tribune, the Tribune, the Northwest Indiana Times, the Charlie Project, and the NamUs database. So that is the disappearance of the Thompson family. And I personally was just floored by how little information is out there.
I thought that there would be a lot of newspaper articles that I would have to go through that this would make national news, but it didn't really, nothing really showed up about this family until after Kenneth's death. That's when I was able to find newspaper articles when they were looking back over a year later at the disappearance of this family. But that's four people missing. Four people missing. And there was no wide search for them. There was no immediate police presence.
There was no big convoy of investigators searching near the home, around the home, nothing, nothing that I could find. And that's just shocking to me. Four people are missing. You think, you know, on a scale of resources, one case that involves four people, two of which are very young boys, Everett Jr. and Andrew are only 11 and 8, you think that that would climb up on the police priority list, but it just didn't here. And it really seems as if Kenneth got away with four murders.
I don't know how Kenneth White was able to not be arrested after illegally selling the home. He owned one third of it, but the other two thirds were owned by his sisters. And he forged both of their signatures to make the sale go through. From my understanding, the sale was pretty quick and the new owners immediately gutted the interior. And I have to wonder, to me it seems like an obvious thing that you would talk to the new owners to say, hey, can we search?
Was there anything there when you gutted? Or you know, the construction crew who I'm sure were hired out, it probably just wasn't these two people, but you never know. Like, did they notice anything strange in the house besides, you know, a red bathtub and a red toilet? That is very strange to me. That's not really a color one sees and nobody paints their toilet and bathtub. It sounds as if it was just, you know, like household paint used and you don't use that.
So to me, that seems like it's trying to cover up. And my first thought is that it's trying to cover up a presence of blood. And if the kitchen floor was tore up, again, I would think that you are trying to hide something or you couldn't clean something, you couldn't get rid of something. So you have to just get rid of the floor altogether. So my question would just be to those folks who worked on, you know, the gutting of the interior, did they notice anything else odd?
Anything strange at all when they redid the plumbing? I'm sure they did not keep the red toilet seat and the red tub. Did they notice anything strange there? Was there any kind of, you know, like DNA blood type substance found in the pipes? Like there's so many questions and it seems so glaringly obvious what happened here. And I don't know, again, for the life of me why he was not arrested after an illegal sale of the home and forging these signatures.
I'm, you know, I'm not a lawyer, but I'm pretty sure that's a crime. I'm pretty sure it's against the law to forge homeowner signatures to sell a home. I think that's illegal in my book. Another question that I just have is why has there been no additional searching? Is it just because they really don't have anywhere to go? I mean, they have no clues as to where these four people could be? That's the thing. Like there's four bodies that in theory Kenneth had to get rid of. That's a lot.
That's a lot. I would think that the reason he got rid of the car, sold it to a scrapyard and had it immediately crushed was because that car was used to transport the family, you know, after they were dead or before. But somehow the family was in that van. Obviously they had driven the van around, but I think it was used in their disappearance somehow for sure. Because why else would you get rid of the car?
It just, it just really frustrates me that a family of four, of four go missing in the 90s and there's just no major search done for them. Everett's parents, Herman and Erlene, they try to raise the alarm pretty quickly. They ask for a welfare check and police just take, you know, Kenneth's word at face value, which like, okay, sure, sure.
But then after they come to Chicago, Herman and Erlene and, you know, talk with the workers of the restaurant that Everett and Lydia owned and hear the story of him showing up with this car accident and he was arrested. And then 12 days later, he's telling the police that, oh, they actually drove to maybe Philadelphia, which is where Herman and Erlene are and they obviously didn't see their son or his family. Or maybe Minneapolis or maybe they flew to Hawaii, like all these different stories.
It just feels like if maybe the police had taken their disappearance a little bit more seriously in the beginning, that maybe we could have answers today. Maybe Kenneth wouldn't have been able to get rid of so much evidence like the car and the home as quickly as he did. Maybe we would have answers. Obviously the police, they don't have any hope of finding the Thompsons alive. And unfortunately, I agree there. I don't think that the Thompsons ran away to get away from Kenneth.
I don't think that happened. I don't think that there's a world where Everett would have just ran without telling his parents who he had a really great relationship with. And Lydia was close with her other sister, Phyllis. And you know, the boys were obviously in school and had friends. Like I don't see them completely disappearing, going off the grid or anything like that to get away from Kenneth. I don't see that. I think something happened to them, to all of them.
And it's insane that Kenneth was not taken into custody for selling the house, for selling the car. And then when they search his trailer and Gary and they find men's gym shorts and a boy's sock that are soaked in blood, whose blood is that? There's no answer to that. And I would have to think with technology today if that, if those items are still in evidence, that that is something that can be tested.
I don't know if we have the family's DNA on file, but I would almost wonder, did Kenneth hurt other people in Gary, Indiana? Was he hurting people in Gary? And that's why he had these blood soaked shorts and socks. Maybe they're not related at all to the Thompson's disappearance, but it's related to something. Whose blood is it?
And that's a question that's never been answered that I think needs to be answered because Kenneth seems to be responsible for the disappearance of four people, but are there more people in his wake that he's also responsible for? That's something that I would be curious about. I just hope that in the future we can find the Thompson family and just bring them to rest in a beautiful spot, not wherever they are.
And while, you know, it seems pretty clear that Kenneth was involved in their disappearance and the cause of their disappearance, and since he did die by suicide, you know, he's not going to stay on trial, which is why I think this is not a priority for the police because the person that they would want to charge is, has already died. So I think that's why police resources are not being used, but that just, that doesn't seem fair to me.
That doesn't seem fair that because he dies by suicide, he doesn't get, even in death, he should still be like held responsible. I don't know if that makes sense, but it's like, people should know that he did this 100% with certainty and not just all of us thinking. It seems pretty obvious. He's chasing around his sister with an axe threatening to kill her. It's just sad. It's just really sad. And I can't get over the fact that it's a whole family, a whole family just gone.
You know, right now, I'm, as I'm recording this, it's, you know, it's right around the Christmas season, the new year, Thanksgiving just passed. So you spend all this time with family and it's just so hard to imagine a family of four going missing and no alarm being raised, no major searches, no national coverage. It's really sad. It's sad to me. And I really hope that we find out what happened to the Thompson family because they, they deserve answers still.
Their families, their loved ones, their cousins, their classmates, anybody who knew them, they deserve answers. Well I just have you for a few more minutes here. If you want to give us a holiday present, a new year's present, just a present in general, something that would be so helpful is if you leave a written review in Apple podcast, if that's where you're listening, or give us five stars, thumbs up, whatever the metric is in your favorite podcast player.
It is so helpful for others to find our podcast and for others to give us a chance and a listen. So that would be such a fantastic gift if you don't mind doing that. And it also helps get these stories out to other people, which is the ultimate goal of cold and missing is to cover stories that don't really get told that often. We will be posting on our Instagram pictures of the Thompson family. So if you want to follow us there, if you're not already, we'll have pictures of them up this week.
And we also post active missing person cases in our stories and just try to keep a lot of true crime information going in our story. So it's a really good follow if that's something that you are interested in. You can also head over to our website www.coldandmissing.com where we have all of our transcripts, all of our episodes, everything, everything is over there. So if you or someone you love is hard of hearing, our transcripts are available to follow along with over on our website.
And that is all I have. If you're listening to this in real time, I hope you are having a wonderful holiday and I hope you have a happy new year as well. If you're not listening to this in real time, I just hope you're having a great day. Thank you again so much for listening to cold and missing. I'm your host Allie. Have a good week and stay safe, y'all.