Anaiah Walker Re-release

Voices for Justice

Sarah Turney

True Crime, Society & Culture, Documentary

4.8 • 9K Ratings

🗓️ 13 November 2025

⏱️ 45 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Anaiah Walker entered the Arizona foster care system at age 13. Before her 14th birthday, she was trafficked by adults posing as teenagers online. By age 15, she ran away from several group homes and was officially listed as a missing child with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. Just after her 16th birthday, she was supposed to testify against her abusers in court, but on May 22, 2020, Anaiah was found dead in a ditch on Interstate 10 near Watson Road. Her cause of death was high-velocity impact. She has never received justice. The Buckeye Police Department is searching for a 2016 to 2018 Honda Civic EX or LX in the color Midnight Burgundy Pearl. They say the owner may have replaced the driver’s side door mirror cover, the front bumper, and the left front fog light cover after Anaiah’s death. Anyone with information about Anaiah’s death or whereabouts before her death is asked to call Silent Witness at 480-948-6377. You can also submit tips online at silentwitness.org. For more information about the podcast and the cases discussed, visit VoicesforJusticePodcast.com Don't forget to follow me on social media under Voices for Justice Podcast & SarahETurney Join the Patreon family to get instant access to a library of extra content, support the show, and support these cases https://www.patreon.com/VoicesforJustice For more information about the cases discussed, visit ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠VoicesforJusticePodcast.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ For even more content or if you just want to support our show, you can join our Patreon at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Patreon.com/voicesforjustice⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Follow us on social media: Twitter: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@VFJPod⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Instagram: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@VoicesforJusticePodcast⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ TikTok: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@VoicesforJusticePodcast⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Facebook: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@VoicesforJusticePodcast⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Voices for Justice is hosted by Sarah Turney Twitter: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@SarahETurney⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Instagram: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@SarahETurney⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ TikTok: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@SarahETurney⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Facebook: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@SarahETurney⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ YouTube: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@SarahTurney⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ The introduction music used in Voices for Justice is Thread of Clouds by Blue Dot Sessions. Outro music is Melancholic Ending by Soft and Furious. The track used for ad transitions is Pinky by Blue Dot Sessions. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Voices for Justice is a podcast that uses adult language and discusses sensitive and potentially triggering topics, including violence, abuse, and murder.
0:11.3	This podcast may not be appropriate for younger audiences.
0:15.1	All parties are innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.
0:18.4	Some names have been changed or omitted per their request or for safety
0:21.8	purposes. Listener discretion is advised. My name is Sarah Turney and this is Voices for Justice.
0:34.4	Today I'm discussing the disappearance and death of 16-year-old Anaya Walker from my hometown, Phoenix, Arizona.
0:43.0	I first saw Anaya's name when I was researching a different case, right there in the executive summary of a report by the Center for the Rights of Abuse Children, titled Disappearing and Dying, Why 20,000 Kids Disappeared
0:56.6	from foster care every year, and how to end this crisis. The first page of the report reads in part,
1:03.5	quote, Anaya Walker was 15 when she went missing from Arizona's foster care system in December 2019.
1:12.3	Five months later, her body,
1:17.9	shoeless and disfigured, was found discarded on the median of a freeway. It took the police 12 days to identify the child. Anaya was one of the estimated 20,000 children who go missing
1:24.5	from the child protection system every year.
1:33.4	State agencies weren't required to report missing foster children to law enforcement until 2014.
1:38.3	Since then, reports of children missing from care have more than doubled.
1:43.9	Protocols and best practices for the search and recovery of missing foster children are scarce, and laws outlining
1:45.6	search requirements are virtually non-existent. Traffickers know that children without stable
1:51.0	families are easy prey. Research overwhelmingly shows that most sexually trafficked children are from
1:57.4	foster care. Some children, like Anaya, are found dead. Some are never found, end quote.
2:06.2	This is the case of Anaya Walker. It's hard to know exactly where to begin Anaya's story,
2:13.1	and I'll warn you that it feels incomplete. Anaya spent many years in and out of group homes in the
2:18.4	foster care system, which means she met and likely lost many people she developed relationships with.
2:25.0	I imagine Anaya touched a lot of lives. She was considered to be a chronic runner from the system,
	...

Transcript will be available on the free plan in 11 days. Upgrade to see the full transcript now.

Previous episode | Next episode

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

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