186 - The Disappearance of Gail Joiner

Trace Evidence

Steven Pacheco

True Crime, Documentary, Society & Culture, History

4.7 • 4.2K Ratings

🗓️ 21 January 2022

⏱️ 81 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

On the first day of Fall in 1972, thirteen year old Gail Joiner rushed home from school to her parents house in Thonotosassa, Florida. An hour later, the teen attached a leash to her beloved pet racoon's collar and strode out of the house to take him on his daily walk. She never returned.

Despite exhaustive searches involving more than 200 people, not a trace of Gail was ever found. Within a month of her disappearance the case had grown cold and the investigation was scaled back. For the next decade, her case lingered in the limbo of joining other cold case files.

Then in October of 1982, a confessed serial killer took credit for Gail's murder. After allegedly leading police to where he had disposed of her body, Gerald Stano retracted his confession and Gail's remains were never found. Had Stano been responsible, or was this another case of a murderer taking credit for crimes he didn't commit?

Trace Evidence Facebook

Instagram

Twitter

Official Website

Official Merch

Music Courtesy of: "Lost Time" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

Sources: https://www.trace-evidence.com/gail-joiner

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Looking to remorgage, it might be time to find out if you could save.
0:04.6	With NatWest, you could lock an array after 6 months before your current deal ends.
0:09.6	Head online to see how much you could borrow in less than 10 minutes.
0:13.2	That's just one of the reasons we've been named Best Bank for Mortgages by your Mortgage 28 times.
0:19.0	Yeah, that's a lot.
0:20.6	Start making moves and search NatWest mortgages.
0:23.6	NatWest, tomorrow begins today.
0:26.8	Your home may be repossessed if you do not keep up repayments on your mortgage.
0:38.8	The heat of a Florida summer lingered as the calendar ushered in the first day of fall.
0:44.4	Rushing home from school with her mindset to adventure, 13-year-old Gail join her, put a small snack together,
0:50.8	and then announced that she was going to take her pet raccoon for a walk.
0:54.8	Something she did almost every day.
0:57.6	Leaving her shoes beside the door, the teens strode out into the shrinking Florida sunlight and seemingly vanished.
1:04.8	When her parents couldn't track her down, they called in the authorities who launched massive searches over the next three days.
1:12.0	Despite their efforts, they never found even a single footprint.
1:16.2	Bloodhounds lost her scent, helicopters and boats combed over land and water, but not a trace of the 13-year-old could be located.
1:25.2	Witnesses later came forward, telling the story of the young girl they'd seen talking to a man in a white car.
1:33.0	What happened to Gail join her that September afternoon in 1972?
1:38.0	At she fallen into the lake, was she lost somewhere in the surrounding wilderness, or had the man behind the wheel of that car sped off with the teenager and her pet to an unknown destination.
1:50.0	Investigators had no way of knowing that this case would become the oldest unsolved missing child investigation in Hillsborough County.
1:58.0	Nearly 50 years later, the answers remain as elusive as they were all those years ago.
2:05.0	This is Trace Evidence, Episode 186, The Disappearance of Gail joiner.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Steven Pacheco, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Steven Pacheco and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.