Hell and Gone Murder Line: Karen Mitchell
Hell and Gone
iHeartPodcasts
4.3 • 7.3K Ratings
🗓️ 13 November 2025
⏱️ 34 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
On Thanksgiving Day, November 25, 1997, 16-year-old Karen Mitchell vanished in Eureka, California. Originally from Whittier near Long Beach, she had moved north a few months earlier to live with her aunt and uncle, hoping the rural setting would suit her nature-loving personality better than Southern California.
That afternoon, Karen caught a ride with her aunt to Bayshore Mall, then left around 2:45 p.m. to walk about a mile along Broadway (US 101) to her daycare job...but she never arrived. When her aunt came to pick her up hours later, Karen was gone. Despite immediate searches and her mother’s desperate trip north, Karen Mitchell was never seen again.
If you have a case you’d like us to look into, you can reach out to us at our Hell and Gone Murder Line at 678-744-6145. Or, you can send us a message on Instagram @hellandgonepod
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is an I-Heart podcast. |
| 0:02.5 | Guaranteed Human. |
| 0:06.7 | School of Humans. |
| 0:09.8 | Helen God Murder Line actively investigates cold case murders. |
| 0:13.6 | In an effort to raise public awareness, invite witnesses to come forward, and present evidence |
| 0:18.5 | that could potentially be further investigated by law enforcement. |
| 0:22.3 | While we value insights from family and community members, their statements should not be |
| 0:26.8 | considered evidence and point to the challenges of verifying facts inherent in cold cases. |
| 0:32.9 | We remind listeners that everyone is presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. |
| 0:38.6 | Nothing in the podcast is intended to state or imply that anyone who has not been convicted of a crime is guilty of any wrongdoing. |
| 0:46.8 | Thanks for listening. |
| 0:50.3 | On Tuesday, November 25, 1997, Thanksgiving Day, 16-year-old Karen Mitchell had the day off from school and was thinking about her future. |
| 1:01.6 | Karen grew up in Southern California and, for a long time, lived with her mother, Mary Casper, and her brother James, in Whittier, a town about 20 miles from Long Beach, California. |
| 1:13.2 | Karen had been attending high school in Long Beach, but Karen had recently made the decision |
| 1:18.1 | to move in with her aunt and uncle to a small town in Northern California called Eureka in Humboldt County, |
| 1:24.8 | population 28,000. |
| 1:27.1 | The Guardian newspaper did an interview with Karen's mother Mary and her brother James in 2015. |
| 1:33.2 | And according to what Mary told the newspaper, Karen didn't really fit in in Long Beach. |
| 1:38.8 | She was kind of a hippie, very into the environment, animals, and nature. |
| 1:43.3 | She didn't care about fashion or makeup like a lot of the other girls in her class. |
| 1:47.8 | It seemed like there was some conflict brewing at home. |
| 1:51.3 | Her mom told the newspaper they had been budding heads and arguing more often. |
... |
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