173. Looks Like Unreliable Statements - The Disappearance Of Erica Baker

Melissa opens Season 4 with a vexing case out of Soutwest Ohio – the town of Kettering, where on February 7, 1999, nine year-old Erica Baker took her aunt’s dog for a walk and never returned.  The dog, with leash still attached, was found just an hour after Erica left the house.  And this disappearance is not just frustrating and sad (as all cold or missing person cases are).  It is also weird.  Because even though someone was arrested and convicted of being involved in young Erica’s death, it really…wasn’t…solved.  It seems that witness accounts indicated that Erica may have been struck by a van near the recreation center where the dog was found.  A crack addict by the name of Christian John Gabriel who with two others had been fleeing in a van after stealing from the local Meijer store, eventually confessed that he may have hit a girl while driving the van and that he and his accomplices buried the body at a local state park.  But then he changed the story – claiming one of the others – on Jan Marie Franks (now deceased) – was actually driving the van.  Today he claims that all of his confessions were untrue and that he wasn’t involved at all in Erica’s disappearance.  Police have spent innumerable hours and dollars looking for Erica’s remains based on Gabriel’s various confessions, but have never found anything.  Eventually Gabriel and his cohorts were convicted of the Meijer robbery – and Gabriel was convicted in 2005 of gross abuse of a corpse and tampering with evidence.  Gabriel served six years in prison and has been free since 2011.  And through all of this, no one has actually been convicted of killing Erica Baker – and neither she, her remains nor any sign of her whatsoever has emerged.  If you know anything that may lead to the truth about what happened to her – or where her remains might be found, please call the Kettering Police Department at (937) 296-2555.