Criminology is a true crime podcast that may contain discussion about violent or disturbing topics.

Listener discretion is advised. Hello everyone and welcome to episode 404 of the criminology podcast. I'm Mike Ferguson.

And this is Mike Morford. Mr. Morford, how you doing this week, buddy? I'm doing pretty good. A little bit under the weather, but getting through it, not complaining. What are you up to?

I'm on my own this week. My wife is down your way, not your way, but she's in Florida for spring break.

Oh, out there on the beach, getting in trouble, having a few too many drinks, having run-ins with the local police, that kind of stuff.

Yeah, I've been seeing on the news, a lot of spring break partying going on.

She's probably not in that mix, but uh she's down there uh sunning for sure having a few we'll just hope you don't i imagine hope you don't have any calls saying that you you know you have to come down there and battle her out that'd be a problem that would be a problem because i'm kind of far away all right let's go ahead and give uh our patreon shoutouts we had new support from kim klein

and bernadette pelleteer so great new support we really appreciate it yeah thank you so much for

that support it really helps out for everyone that supports the show we can't't thank you enough. If you want to get started, head over to patreon.com slash

criminology. All right. We're hurtling into this week's case. And in this episode, we're talking about the

2015 murder of a young woman named Ebby Steppik in West Little Rock, Arkansas.

The murder of Ebby Stepik is a crime that shocked her community,

but it's really the details and events around and preceding her murder that have stumped

investigators for over a decade as they try to figure out if the things going on in

Abby's life played a role

in her death. On October 26, 2015, 18-year-old Abby Jane Steppick was reported missing. She was last

seen when she left her grandparents home in West Little Rock, Arkansas, around 8 p.m. on the 24th.

Ebby had recently upended her entire life.

She transferred from a charter school to a public school, central high school, in Little Rock,

for her senior year. And just one month before she disappeared, she moved out of her parents' house.

She wanted to be more independent and live with fewer rules. Her mom, Lori, told Dateline,

she went through a lot of changes all at once, and suddenly she was chomping at the bit to take

...