August 27th 1992

Tupelo, Mississippi

13-year-old Lee Ochi is left home alone for the day when her mother goes to work.

Since Hurricane Andrew has moved over the area, Lee's mother attempts to check on her,

but discovers that she is vanished from the house and all signs point to foul play.

One month later, Lee's mother has mailed an envelope containing Lee's glasses,

but the identity of the person who sent them is unknown.

After that, the trail went cold.

Hello everyone and welcome to the latest mini-sode of the trail went cold.

I'm your host Robin Warder, and today we will be chronicling a pretty bizarre missing person's case.

The 1992 disappearance of 13-year-old Lee Ochi.

Not too long ago, this story was requested by two separate listeners named Holly and Catherine

within the span of a few days. In fact, Holly lives in the area where this disappearance took place.

I was familiar with this case before, and always thought it sounded pretty strange,

so I figured this would be an ideal time to cover it on the podcast,

especially since it's going to be reaching its 25th anniversary in August.

There are many unusual aspects to this mystery, not the least of which is that a young girl

happened to vanish from her home under suspicious circumstances during the most destructive hurricane

in the history of the United States, though it doesn't sound like the hurricane played much

of a role in this story. While doing research online, I can't recall coming across a case with

more gossip and rumors than this one, as it appears that a lot of people from the area have their

own personal opinions about what happened here. So the big challenge with putting this mini-sode

...