Darkcast Network, Indie Pods with a Darkside.

On February 13, 1996, 8-year-old Debbie Sassen left her elementary school in Dusseldorf, Germany, after a morning swimming lesson.

She was heading home for lunch, but she never arrived.

In the span of a 900-meter walk through her quiet neighborhood, Debbie vanished without a trace.

Over the next 30 years, her family was torn apart and left to wonder what happened to the bright, bubbly little girl who everyone loved.

While the cases remained unsolved for decades,

recent developments mean that we may be closer to answers than ever before. When a person goes

missing, there's a special kind of pain in the not knowing. I want to tell the stories of those who

never came home. Today, I want to tell you this story of Debbie Sasson. I'm Conan Gallagher. And I'm Ethan Flick.

And this is, and then they were gone.

Music Welcome back, everyone.

Thank you for joining us once again.

I'm Kona.

And I'm Ethan.

And we're the husband and wife team behind this podcast.

Each week, I tell you the story of an unsolved missing person's case.

Ethan doesn't know anything about the case going into the episode and is here to provide his reactions and questions in real time, hopefully asking some of the same ones you have at home.

So this week, we've got our third two-parter in a row.

Come on. No, I'm joking. This one is actually not at all that. It's very straightforward.

But it is slightly experimental because we have covered international cases before, but this is the first one we've covered that's not from an English-speaking country.

Oh, yeah. I guess I didn't think about that. I mean, they all speak English in Germany.

Well, yes, of course. But their news media is not in English. So I haven't done one of these before just honestly for that very reason because I was concerned about using sources that weren't in English. But I decided to just,

...