Ep 212 : The Disappearance of Trudy Appleby
Mama Mystery with Kelly Evans
Kelly Evans
4.6 • 996 Ratings
🗓️ 9 September 2025
⏱️ 45 minutes
🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In August 1996, 11-year-old Trudy Appleby vanished from her home in Moline, Illinois. She was last seen getting into a gray car with a young man, swimsuit and towel in hand — but she never came back. For nearly three decades, her case haunted the Quad Cities as her family held vigils, detectives chased leads, and suspicions mounted around trusted family friends.
Now, after 29 years, a Henry County grand jury has indicted Jamison “Jamie” Fisher for Trudy’s murder, finally bringing the case closer to justice.
In this episode of Mama Mystery, we explore the full timeline of Trudy’s disappearance, the investigation that went cold, and the decades of determination that led to this long-awaited break in one of Illinois’ most heartbreaking cases.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome back to Mama Mystery. I am your host, Kelly. And before we dive into today's story, |
| 0:05.8 | make sure you're following the podcast on whatever platform you're using right now, whether |
| 0:09.8 | it's Spotify, Apple, audible, whatever it is, make sure you're following because that way you |
| 0:14.4 | won't miss any future new episodes. And if you're interested in bonus content or ad-free |
| 0:20.2 | episodes, you can check out our Patreon at patreon.com |
| 0:23.5 | slash mama mystery. We are back from CrimeCon, fresh on the heels of CrimeCon in Denver. It was so |
| 0:31.0 | fun. This was my third time going to CrimeCon. And of course, Austin was with me. So if you're listening |
| 0:36.9 | and you were also at CrimeCon, |
| 0:38.6 | or if you're a new listener, you may have met Austin and myself. Sometimes Austin is on these episodes, |
| 0:44.0 | and we're working on getting him back on a regular basis. It's just kind of hard when we're both so |
| 0:47.8 | busy. But all of that to say is that I loved going to CrimeCon. Our next CrimeCon is going to be in May in Vegas. So that is one |
| 0:57.4 | that you will not want to miss. If you've ever debated going to CrimeCon, let me kind of give you a |
| 1:02.2 | taste of what it's like. So it's usually a two and a half day event starting on Friday around |
| 1:07.8 | noon, all day, Saturday, ending Sunday around noon. |
| 1:11.3 | The way that CrimeCon is set up is there are multiple stations, multiple big conference |
| 1:16.7 | rooms that you can go into depending on what you're interested in, whether that's meeting |
| 1:21.4 | some of your favorite creators or YouTube creators, podcast creators, or even just exhibitors |
| 1:27.1 | like DNA, forensics, canines. I mean, |
| 1:31.3 | literally anything to do with true crime is usually in that main podcast creator row is what it's |
| 1:37.4 | called. And then there's other huge rooms where they have different panels going on. You can watch |
| 1:41.9 | a live recording of a podcast. You can watch speakers like |
| 1:45.4 | Nancy Grace, Matt Murphy, the hosts of Dateline, or even just families that you know that have |
... |
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