1982 | The Vanishing of Jennifer Marteliz
SEQUESTERED Podcast
Road Trip Studios
4.1 • 802 Ratings
🗓️ 12 May 2026
⏱️ 24 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Jennifer Marteliz was seven years old when she disappeared while walking home from school in Tampa, Florida, on November 15, 1982. She was only blocks from home. Witnesses later described seeing Jennifer upset near a crossing guard and possibly near a rust-colored car shortly before she vanished. What should have been an ordinary walk home became one of Florida's most haunting unsolved child disappearance cases.
In Episode 3 of SEQUESTERED Season Four, Sara Reid reconstructs Jennifer's final known moments through witness accounts, search records, media reporting, and the growing fractures inside the investigation itself. As police and volunteers searched neighborhoods, drainage pipes, vacant lots, and wooded areas across Tampa, the case slowly became defined by uncertainty: conflicting sightings, theories that never fully fit, and a timeline that seemed impossibly small for a child to disappear without a trace.
More than forty years later, Jennifer Marteliz has never been found. And the few minutes between school and home still remain unexplained.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | 40 years is a long time to wait, |
| 0:05.0 | a long time to keep looking, |
| 0:08.0 | a long time to wonder if someone somewhere |
| 0:11.0 | knows the one thing that could finally bring your kid home. |
| 0:15.0 | I just feel like a failed mother because I couldn't find her. It's going on 40 years. It's a long time. |
| 0:28.1 | For nearly four agonizing decades, Catherine Longo has searched for her daughter, Jennifer, |
| 0:33.3 | doing everything in her power to get her home. |
| 0:39.3 | Jennifer Martelese was seven years old when she disappeared. |
| 0:43.9 | She was a second grader, tiny for her age. |
| 0:48.0 | She was smart, loved. |
| 0:50.9 | And she was the kind of child who left for school on a Monday morning and should have been |
| 0:55.9 | home by the afternoon. But on November 15, 1982, Jennifer never made it home. And what happened |
| 1:05.1 | in the short distance between Shaw Elementary and her house has never been fully explained. I'm Sarah Reed, and this is sequestered season four. The year is 1982. We're in Tampa, Florida, and this is the vanishing of Jennifer Martelese. |
| 1:41.5 | If you were alive in 1982, you might remember what the year felt like. |
| 1:48.6 | It was the year of E.T., of cassette tapes, and handwritten phone messages. The Tylenol murders had reminded the country that danger could hide inside of ordinary |
| 1:54.0 | things. |
| 1:55.6 | But still, most people did not look at a short walk home from school as a risk, not in daylight, and not in your |
| 2:03.2 | own neighborhood. News moved differently back then, through newspapers, evening broadcasts, |
| 2:10.7 | phone calls, and word of mouth. Childhood moved differently too. Kids walked home from school, they crossed streets with friends, and moved through familiar |
| 2:21.9 | neighborhoods that felt safe. |
| 2:25.1 | Most afternoons, nothing happened until that one Monday in Tampa. |
| 2:33.0 | It's November 15th, 1982. |
... |
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