The following is intended for mature audiences only.

Listener discretion is advised.

Jennifer vanished sometime in the overnight hours.

Right now there is no trace.

Investigators say evidence leads them to believe that she's dead.

Stick my nose back on the trail. That's all I can do. This is already gone.

Already gone. Already.

Leap Day, February 29, 2000. The day begins in Mount Morris Township, Michigan, the way that most school mornings do. Backpacks are slung over small shoulders, coats are half-fast-fastened against the cold, and parents hurry while children move more slowly, distracted by loose shoelaces and have finished conversations.

Come with me to a neighborhood just outside Flint. This is the Beecher Community School District,

an area that has spent years quietly absorbing the impact of economic collapse. For many families

here, school is more than a place of education.

It is where children eat both breakfast and lunch, where they are supervised while parents

work long hours, and where stability exists in a community where very little feels secure.

Thank you. little feels secure. By the late 1990s,

Beecher is one of the poorest school districts in Michigan.

Nearly half of its school-age children live below the poverty line.

More than 80% of students qualify for free or reduced-priced meals.

The Greater Flint area has been devastated by decades of deindustrialization,

particularly by the downsizing of General Motors,

which once sustained entire neighborhoods.

When those jobs disappeared,

so did much of the economic foundation that supported families.

...