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 . And I'm your co -host, Eli. Welcome back, everyone. We did have to take a week off last week. Both of us came down with quite the cold. So I was not fun to listen to, as I was told by many of my co -workers last week. So we took the week off to rest and recover. But we are back this week. Eli is back this week. He had a little break in his rehearsal schedule. So we wanted to get on here and bring you a new episode. Yeah, we are back this week, and we
are on episode 157. And if you're new here, I always encourage new listeners to go back and listen to episodes that we've put out previously. We have over 150. Yeah, I encourage you to go take a listen to those. Absolutely, but we'll just go ahead and get into this week's case. We are on a missing person case this week. All right, let's get into it. Let's do it. So just as a bit of a content warning at the top, this
case does involve a young person. Today, we are talking about the missing person case of Yvonne Reglar .And this takes place in August of 1977 in Fairview Park, Ohio. But first, a little bit about Yvonne. Yvonne Reglar had just turned 17 years old in the summer of 1977. She was born on July 11th and she was just weeks away from starting her senior year. She was a good student who routinely earned A's and B's and never caused her teachers or parents much trouble. She was
tall. She was around 5 '10 and 135 pounds with brown hair and blue eyes. She lived in North Olmstead, Ohio with her mother and stepfather. Yvonne's biological father had died when she was young, and her stepfather had been there for most of her life. Yvonne also had a part -time job. She had been working for about a year as an attendant at a Sunoco gas station. She was considered a top employee for her age. She
was reliable and dependable. Overall, it seems that Yvonne was a wonderful friend, a hard worker, and a good student. Someone who had a very bright future ahead of her. And now a timeline of events. Monday, August 8th, 1977. That day started off like any other day for Yvonne. However, her schedule was going to be disrupted in the morning, but she wasn't quite aware of it yet. She had been working at a Sunoco gas station in North Olmsted
for about a year. But that week, and specifically that Monday, the manager at a different Sunoco in nearby Fairview Park was going on vacation for the week. According to reports, Yvonne was selected last minute to cover for him. It was going to be her first day at the new station. She just didn't know it yet when she woke up that morning. When she woke up, she started getting ready for work just like any other day. She was wearing a yellow t -shirt and blue jean shorts.
She was scheduled to work the morning shift, 7 a .m. to 3 p .m. Her parents saw her get ready that morning. At around 6 .25 a .m., they left the house to go fishing on Lake Erie. Yvonne's boyfriend was picking her up at around 6 .30 to drive her for work. Yvonne didn't drive. As they were leaving, Yvonne told her parents, quote, There was nothing unusual about the exchange. Nothing to suggest it would be the last time they would see her. Yvonne first arrived at her
normal store in North Olmstead at 7 a .m. From there, her manager Rick informed her that she would be filling in at the store in Fairview Park. Rick drove her to the Fairview Park location. Yvonne was dropped off and the morning seemed to run as normal from there. At noon, Rick stopped by to check on her and dropped off a sandwich. He didn't report anything out of the ordinary. Throughout the morning, Yvonne made several calls to friends from the gas station. They made plans
to see a movie later that evening. One of her friends will report that they talked on the phone around 1 in the afternoon and confirmed that they were seeing a movie that night. While they were on the phone, the bell rang, signaling a customer had pulled in and Yvonne would need to go pump the gas. At this particular Sunoco station, there was one gas pump that was not self -service, so the attendant would have to
come out and put the gas in the car. The friend said Yvonne mentioned a car was there for help, but it drove off. They continued talking on the phone. Then the car came back. Yvonne told her friend she would call her back, but she never did. At approximately 1 .25, an attendant at a gas station across the street told police he saw Yvonne pumping gas at the one pump that was not self -service. She was assisting a woman
who had paid with a credit card. At around 1 .30, again, an attendant at a nearby station, I'm not sure if it's the same one, it's unclear in the reporting, said Yvonne had complained about a customer who left only $1 for $3 worth of gas. At 1 .45 p .m., a vending machine operator arrived at the gas station but found it empty. People began showing up to purchase gas, but
nobody was there to help. Fairview Park Police Chief Paul Shepard would later say, quote, people showed up to use to purchase gas or do some work there and found the gas station empty. Originally in 1977, it was reported that at 2 .15, The next employee arrived. However, in 2024, police say that it was closer to 2 .45 p .m., so two different times, about a half -hour window there. When the next employee arrived, Gary, he could not
find Yvonne anywhere. He waited. He expected Yvonne to return any minute, but she would never reappear. So at 2 .50 p .m., he called the police. When police arrived, Inside of the gas station, officers found Yvonne's purse. All of its contents were still inside, including all of her money. There was makeup inside. A few books she had brought to read at work remained unopened. Her thermos of iced tea sat there. The sandwich her manager had dropped off earlier remained untouched.
The gas station showed no signs of a struggle. Nothing appeared to be missing. No one reported seeing Yvonne walk away or get into a car. No one noticed any commotion. The cash register was untouched. All of the money was accounted for. The only thing out of place was that the self -service pumps showed gas had been taken without payment. Initially, police did not believe she had simply walked away from her job, and her parents thought the same thing. Her stepfather
said, quote, I can't believe she ran away. She's a very responsible girl. She also had made plans with her friends to go to the movies that night. And just the weekend before, it's Monday that she goes missing, so just that past weekend, she had bought a dress to wear to the funeral of a friend's father that was due to take place later that week. By all accounts, she had no plans of running away and had lots of plans coming
up that week. The next day, Tuesday, August 9th, police began searching for Yvonne and interviewing family, friends, and co -workers to determine whether she could have been a runaway. Police continue this search for days. On Thursday, August 11th, Yvonne has been missing since Monday. There was still no sign of her. Police and her parents fear that she had been abducted. Lieutenant Fred Nippenberg says, quote, The station location is a busy area, and no one remembers seeing anything
unusual. We're going to start all over again interviewing people. Police had searched around the Sunoco station. They had searched the high cliffs along the south side of Lorraine Road in the Rocky River Reservation as well to see if there had been any sign of her, and still there was nothing. On Friday, August 12th, The FBI joined the search after an airline clerk reported that on Tuesday or Wednesday, a girl fitting Yvonne's description purchased a ticket
for a 10 a .m. flight to Miami. The young woman paid in $1 bills and 50 -cent pieces. She had no luggage and she was traveling alone. While the police and FBI are looking into this tip, the next day, Saturday, August 13th, Police get another lead from a truck driver who said a young woman approached him at a rest area along Route 2 near Port Clinton early Thursday morning and asked for a ride to Toledo, Ohio. No one could think of any reason that Yvonne would want to
go to Toledo. But still, police go to that area to look for her. However, neither one of these leads, the trucker or the airline lead, result in any clues about Yvonne. On Wednesday, August 17th, so Yvonne has been missing for a week and a half at this point, Lieutenant John Hall said, quote, we're exactly where we were on the day after her disappearance. The strange thing is, is she left her purse behind in the station. That's the thing that bothers me more than anything
else. However, Pretty quickly, the case seems to go cold. Police never really are able to turn up any leads in these first few weeks of investigation to point to any direction that Yvonne could have gone. In November of 1977, the investigation had stalled. The case was getting colder by the day, and it had been over three months since Yvonne vanished. Police began looking into Richard
Allen Wright. who had been serving time for kidnapping and sexually assaulting an 18 -year -old from the same area in Ohio between 1972 and 1975. So that would have been five years before Yvonne vanished. However, he had escaped from prison and was on the run during the time of her disappearance. During his escape, he kidnapped a schoolteacher and held her captive for 12 days. The schoolteacher
managed to escape. When police went to his trailer after, police found blood and hair that did not belong to the teacher, and they began wondering if this could be a link to Yvonne. They contacted Yvonne's parents for her blood type and a hair sample for comparison. According to her mother, she had to dig through Yvonne's clothes to find a single hair clinging to any of her clothes. However, the evidence did not match Yvonne. About a month later, so it's been over four months
now, that Yvonne has been missing. Police traveled to Pennsylvania to interview a college student who believed that he had picked up Yvonne in Pennsylvania as a hitchhiker and had driven her to a nearby town. The student had recently seen a missing person poster and recognized her as the girl he had picked up. He wasn't sure of the date, but believed it was after her disappearance. Police questioned people in the area and searched for any other sign of Yvonne, but they didn't
find anything. In August of 1978, so it's been a full year that Yvonne has been missing, one of her friends says, quote, Initially, police believed that this was an abduction, as I had spoken about earlier. But, As no ransom demands were made and no body was recovered, they began to believe that she may have actually run away. This is also fueled by the fact that tips have come in from people claiming they had picked her up as a hitchhiker. Her parents monitored
her bank account. There had been no activity on it. Police theorized that issues with her stepfather may have led her to run away. One of her friends, Kathy, said, quote, Kathy and another friend also told reporters that Yvonne had an ex -boyfriend she wanted to get back at. Quote, These friends were convinced she had staged the mysterious circumstances around her disappearance. Her parents never believed any of that. They
believed that she had been abducted. And still no firm sign or clue of Yvonne ever popped up. In July of 1980, so just shy of three years, still no sign of her. The most recent tip that police had received at this point? had come from somebody who had seen a model in a hairstyle magazine who resembled Yvonne, so they called it in. Police did investigate this, but the woman was not Yvonne. Police said that the case was technically still active, simply because it was
unsolved. In August of 1981, so four years, police admitted they no longer knew what happened to Yvonne. Though they once believed that she ran away, that had been their most recent working theory, it had been months and years since they had had any other sightings come in of her, and they were never able to confirm that any of the sightings they did get were actually Yvonne. So the case truly goes cold after this. It takes
years and years for an update to come. The last update really seems to come in 2024, so very recently. It had been 47 years since Yvonne disappeared. A cold case unit had announced that they were reopening her case in hopes of finally getting answers. Also created around this time is an aged progressed photo of Yvonne of what she would look like in her 60s, which is around the age she would be today. But there have truly been no new updates or developments in Yvonne's case
since that first day that she went missing. So if you know anything about the disappearance of Yvonne in August of 1977 or her whereabouts today, please call the Fairview Park Police at 440 -356 -4415. So that is the missing person case of Yvonne Reglar. Before we get into the timeline, just to talk about Yvonne a little bit, to echo what you said, you know, she was a young woman starting on the precipice of a new horizon, you know, her life beginning after
high school. And, you know, she had a job that she was working at. It seemed like her life was in the beginning stages of budding and blooming into what the next stages would be. And I'd love to just find answers for this case, you know, for a life to be what seems like it ended abruptly. Whether she is here or not, to me, is still so worthy of... We've covered a lot of cases like this where it's young women who just seem to disappear off the face of the earth. It doesn't
get any easier when we cover the next one. But cases like these, they scare me. They scare me in the way that the people disappear. So I'm really glad that you brought Yvonne's case to
us. Yeah, I... deeply deeply believe and I've said it before on this podcast and I'll say it again on this podcast but in this country in this day and age there should be no reason that anybody goes missing and we just like don't have the answers for it um especially children especially children I Yvonne is 17 years old to me like she is still a child and um you know just there's no I feel like there's no excuses we we should always know where children are and we should
always have answers if we don't. So yeah, as soon as I saw Yvonne's case and looked into it, I definitely knew it was one that I wanted to bring to Cold and Missing simply because I didn't know it and I'm sure other listeners have not heard of her case either. Going right into the timeline of the day she disappeared, I do think it's worth noting again, you know, even though that you said it, that there was a major change
in what her workday looked like. I don't know if she had swapped gas stations before or had done it after she had already arrived to the place that she was supposed to be working at, but that decision being made and kind of being made for her, yes, I do see how that could be a regular part of your job, but to me it's noticeable that On this day, when she started working at a different place, the worst thing that could
have happened to her did. And some part of me can't believe that that is just how it happened. There's a part of me that wonders if there was a design in that decision being made that she would work at a different location on that day. Yeah, it's something you... completely have to think about when you look at the timeline for the day, such a disruption in her schedule. From everything I can tell, it looks like Yvonne arrived at her normal gas station that she typically
worked at in North Olmstead. And then once she got there, she was informed that she was actually going to work at this other one in a nearby town in Fairview Park. So the manager of her store
drove her to the other store. and set her up and yeah it's it's um you have to think like was uh her switching stores part of um an ultimate plan to to uh get her into a car that day or was it just putting her at the wrong place at the wrong time just putting her there um it's very um Curious if it's just a coincidence or if it's if it's planned. Yeah. Lots of questions around that. Now, while she's at the Fairview gas station, we know that she's taking calls.
She's doing her job. And during a phone call, she mentions that there is a car that comes up. takes off again, that's the first red flag for me, is that there was a car that rang for service and then left and then came back. And I'm not sure if this was the same car, but the possibility of one of those cars only paying a dollar for $3 worth of gas. So all of those things were noticeable to me. They were small disruptions that were happening for her while she was working.
Yeah, so there's a couple of things that happens like right in there. So I'm glad you brought it up. So, yeah, she's on the phone. The bell rings. There's a car there. But then the car pulls off. So she just stays on the phone with her friend. The bell rings again. She tells her friend the same car is back. So that is what the friend reported. She goes out to help because
there is one. pump at the gas station that the attendant has to has to do it so she goes to help and put the put the gas in the car and i think this could be the woman that she is helping with because the attendant across the street sees her at like 125 helping a woman i don't know though if uh this is a different person it could be it could not be um but if it's a different person if that if the woman wasn't the one who Drove up, drove off, then came back
again. Then I'm very curious about who that person is that drove off and then decided to come back because I would just be curious to know what they know and what they saw. the vendor shows up and she's not there. So it's a 15 -minute window ultimately from the time somebody last reports seeing her and the time that somebody really notices that she's not there. Yeah, I think one of the big questions for that moment in the timeline is, did she get into a car? Was
she pulled into a car? And if so, was it visible to anyone? And I think the answer to that is no, but it must have happened so quickly to make it be that way, to make it not be a noticeable moment of either her getting into a car or being pulled in. I feel like this moment in the timeline really circles right around that, and we just don't have any information. Yeah. Looking at all of this, there's really no part of me that
believes that Yvonne ran away. I really do think that this is an abduction, that she was pulled into a car. I think it very unlikely she got talked into a car just because of the type of employee she was. She was very responsible. She was dependable. I don't think she's the type that... Someone could convince her to like get in a car and like skip work for a couple of hours. So I think if somebody got her in the car, it was by force. And yeah, to your point, it had
to have been quick. Like that's one thing that like the cops at the time made them kind of think that maybe she did run away was because nobody saw anything. Nobody heard anything. It's a busy street. You know, the attendants had seen her before that. You know, that was kind of fueling them to think that she did run away because how could nobody see nothing? But it really seems that nobody saw anything. Yeah, same for me as well. One of the first things I wrote down was,
to me, this does not read as a runaway. Just the simple fact of her stuff was left behind and she was making active plans for later in that evening to go see a movie. a ruse. I think she was having a regular day to echo what you're saying. I believe that she was abducted. Yeah. And, you know, just to further drive home the point of her plans, like over that past weekend, she had bought a dress for a funeral that I believe was happening on like Tuesday or Wednesday of
that week. A friend's dad had passed away. So she was attending the funeral. And she strikes me. as a friend who would not leave another friend during this time that would show up for her friend during this. So, yeah, I do not think that she ran during this time at all. At all. Yeah, I mean, down to her character and how you described her, she sounds like a friend who just, period, shows up. Or that she shows up to her job, shows up to school, shows up in friendships, shows
up for her family. This is a present. person and active in their life. To me, it does not read as someone who is planning to leave that life. I really want to see answers in Yvonne's case, especially with it being reopened. Like, I really want to see investigators go after this case like they should have, you know, right when she disappeared, like they should have treated it as an abduction from day one. Unfortunately, That did not happen, and now we're here over
47 years later. I really want to see answers for Yvonne and for her family, for those that have known and loved her. Yeah, the case did move slowly, even though there were small blips of her being mentioned that maybe she was seen hitchhiking or went to Toledo or even the other guy that escaped prison and there was... A possibility that maybe he did something while he was out. Even all of those reveals as we move through her timeline were years apart. That information
came out slowly. And one of those moments resulted in her mom having to dig through her clothes to find her hair. I can't even imagine what doing something like that would do to a person. Just knowing that the parents, that her parents were committed to doing anything to help find their child, it's very harrowing, but it gives me the feeling that there are answers out there for this family. I do still think that this case
is so worthy of bringing her home. Yeah, Yvonne deserves to come home and however that looks, she deserves to come home and she deserves to rest and have a place to rest at home. So if you know anything about Yvonne's disappearance in August of 1977 or her whereabouts today, please call the Fairview Park Police at 440 -356 -4415. We will have pictures of Yvonne on our Instagram at coldandmissing, as well as the age progress photos that I mentioned. We'll have that on there
as well. Please share these far and wide. Let's get her case out there. Let's get the age progress photo out there. And let's get energy behind her case and people talking about her. I really hope that resources are just like poured into her case. So that way we can see it solved. We've seen a lot of cold cases solved recently. So
I'd love to see this one solved too. And as I mentioned, if you're not following us at coldandmissing on Instagram, if we ever need to take a week off, I always try to update there either via a post or in our story. So please watch out for it there. And if you're looking for some of our old episodes, like Eli mentioned at the top of the episode, you can find those on our website, www .coldandmissing .com. We also have transcripts
there. So if you or someone you love is hard of hearing, you can follow along with the official transcripts on our website. And if you could leave us a five -star review today, that would be so great. It really helps others find this podcast, give the podcast a chance, give it a listen. And quite frankly, giving it five stars is going to get Yvonne's case listened to because she's right at the top. So that's who they're going to click on and listen to. So giving five
stars really does advocate for these cases. I know I'm asking it for my podcast, but it gets the case information out there, which is why I'm asking for it. I promise if I didn't need to, I would not ask because we do not care about numbers or anything like that. We just want the case information out there. But that is all I have. Thank you so much for listening to Cold and Missing. I'm your host, Ali . And I'm your co -host, Eli. Have a good week and stay safe, y 'all. Stay safe, y 'all.