Hi, Crime Junkies. I'm your host Ashley Flowers, and I'm Britt. And today I have two stories

for you. Stories of two people from marginalized communities who don't often get their stories

told, but stories that are no less mysterious than the ones we tell every week here. Because

in each of these stories, things aren't quite adding up, and there is a mystery that can

only be solved by someone out there. These are the stories of Relisha Rudd and Unique

Harris.

The first story I want to tell you today is about Relisha Rudd. Now, Relisha had to deal

with a lot more as a young 8-year-old than I ever have, and probably more than most of our

listeners ever have. By the time she was 8 in 2014, she had spent much of her life living

in a Washington, D.C. homeless shelter with her mom and her three brothers. It was not

an easy existence, and not one that she even liked. As much as she could, she would stay

at an aunt's house or with friends or friends of family or family members, but the shelter

was impossible to avoid completely. And outside of school, it is where she spent most of her

time.

Now, like staying with friends in family's school was also an escape for Relisha, but

in 2014, she began missing more and more days. At first, I think it was just maybe a day

here, a day there, maybe a week, but then they started counting her absences by the weeks.

One of the most thorough reporting I could find about Relisha's case was done by the team

at WUSA9. They actually did a three-part series on Relisha's case called 18 Days, and

they said that by March of 2014, we're talking less than three months into the year, Relisha

had already racked up 30 days worth of absences, and the most recent was like this two to three

week consecutive stretch of time. Now, it's unclear exactly when her school reached out

...