Deep Reads: A young mother’s disappearance

Post Reports

The Washington Post

Daily News, Politics, News

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🗓️ 23 September 2023

⏱️ 31 minutes

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Summary

The jury had been brought in for a murder trial. It was a homicide with no body, a case that had been first classified as a missing person instead of a death. There had been no confession. No blood. No weapon. No witnesses. The alleged murder had gone unsolved for more than a decade, and onlookers had wondered, not unreasonably, whether it was simply unsolvable.

The question at hand was whether, 13 years ago, a man named Isaac Moye had murdered a woman named Unique Harris. The trial was an attempt to bring an ending, at last, to a mystery that had tortured her family and baffled strangers, including Washington Post reporter Monica Hesse, who had followed the case from the very beginning. By the end of the trial, Monica realized she’d understood the whole case wrong.

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This story is part of a new collection of occasional bonus episodes you’ll be hearing from “Post Reports.” We’re calling these stories “Deep Reads,” and they’re part of The Post’s commitment to immersive and narrative journalism.

Today’s story was written by Monica Hesse and read by Adrienne Walker for Noa: News Over Audio, an app offering curated audio articles.

Transcript

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0:00.0	I'm Monica Hesse, and I'm a columnist for the Washington Post-Style section.
0:04.2	You're about to hear the next story in our deep-read series here on Post Reports.
0:09.4	It's read by a narrator from our partners at the app NOAA, news over audio.
0:14.8	This is a story of a woman who disappeared without a trace from her apartment in the middle of the
0:20.4	night while her children slept in the next room. And I actually covered this mother's disappearance
0:26.8	back when I first started at the post when I was a young reporter in my 20s.
0:31.2	And it's a story that had haunted me ever since. I would think about this woman all of the time.
0:37.5	I would wonder what had happened to her if her case would ever be resolved, if her family
0:42.1	would ever find peace. 12 or 13 years ago when I first reported this story, the family of the
0:48.8	missing woman let me into their lives in a really meaningful and open way. And so it was a privilege,
0:56.5	it was heartbreaking, it was meaningful to get a chance to interact with this family again that
1:02.0	had been so open with me so long ago. I hope that it encourages people to think about the people
1:09.8	behind the strange unsolved mysteries that we get caught up in. Unicaris was a loving and
1:18.1	gentle young woman who would be approaching middle age and the mother of teenagers if she hadn't
1:25.8	been taken away from her family. And so I hope that we leave thinking about her and thinking about
1:31.9	people like her who are the victims of crimes. The prosecutors stood before the jury and asked
1:38.9	them to consider what it meant for something to be missing. Missing, Assistant US Attorney Vanne
1:45.5	Bryant said, is when you briefly misplace your wallet, when you leave it in the wrong drawer or
1:51.4	pocket. But if someone steals your wallet, if they militantly take it from you, then it's not
1:58.1	missing, it's something darker and it's something permanent. The jury had been brought in that morning
2:05.6	for a murder trial. It was a homicide with no body, a case that had been first classified as a
2:11.5	missing person instead of a death. There had been no confession, no blood, no weapon, no witnesses,
	...

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