The Incredible Case of Michele Whitaker. True Crime Documentary

when 32-year-old Michelle Whitaker had gone missing in August 2002 her family contacted the police she had been last seen at a truck stop in South Carolina Michelle's family went through six years of feudal searching praying for her return each day they wondered whether Michelle was still alive or had long since passed away everyone dreaded the worst outcome and the clues police got a number of years later only reinforced those fears Michelle Laurel Whitaker was born on August 16 1969 as one of her parents five children she was very close to her entire family according to her mom Laura Andrews Michelle used to be a very happy child until they moved from Illinois to Gastonia North Carolina when Michelle reached her teenage years she and her mother began to have frequent conflicts because in her opinion her mom was too strict after graduating high school Michelle got married but her marriage lasted for less than a year she was too young and inexperienced to deal with the problems her partner was stirring the abusive treatment by her husband was the start of a protracted and distressing ordeal for Michelle in the opinion of those close to her this period of her life was the cause of her later problems at that time she could not manage to cope with the situation and chose the wrong path following her divorce her family relocated to Spartanburg South Carolina by the time Michelle was 30 she was battling alcohol addiction and already had three failed marriages she was working part-time as a waitress and barely scraping by one evening in 1999 Michelle met a man named David after work and he offered her a ride home Michelle agreed but later regretted it rather than drive her home David instead brought Michelle to an isolated location where he assaulted her and forced her to get intimate with him he was arrested one year later and pleaded guilty to assault and battery he was given an eight-year prison sentence shortly before her disappearance Michelle was arrested for driving under the influence of alcohol Michelle's parents decided it was time to take drastic action they contacted the local police to request that Michelle be held in custody until a place in a rehabilitation center could be secured for her in spite of their heartache her parents felt that such Extreme Measures were the only good thing to do in this situation Michelle became very upset by this act and from that point on the relationship between mother and daughter significantly weakened Michelle was erroneously discharged from jail without going to receive the court-ordered treatment for her abuse of illegal substances and alcohol it was August 5th 2002. Michelle got into an argument with her mother and stormed out of the house in a bad mood three days later the man Michelle stayed with contacted Laura Andrews and told her that he couldn't find her daughter after they had an argument this is how Laura learned of Michelle's disappearance she called a friend who worked at the local police station and asked for help finding her daughter the police were well acquainted with Michelle's lifestyle so Laura was urged to wait a little longer and was told that Michelle would certainly show up on her own two more weeks passed but Michelle never showed up at home on August 21st 2002 an official missing persons report was filed as local law enforcement began investigating Michelle Whitaker's disappearance they soon found out the last place she had been spotted it turned out to be a truck stop they managed to get this piece of information through a local resident named Doug on the day before she disappeared he met Michelle by chance on the street Doug was out on his motorcycle in the evening and stopped outside a bar where Michelle was sitting he came up to her and a conversation started between them Michelle told him that she had had a fight with her boyfriend and he had thrown her out of the house later that evening after going to one bar they visited another bar together where according to Doug the two played a few games of Billiards then rode on his motorcycle for a while and when Dawn broke went to his house thus it was revealed that Michelle Whitaker had been visiting local bars before her disappearance and Doug was the last person to have seen her alive this made him the prime suspect his testimony also revealed that Michelle had allegedly planned to go to Myrtle Beach a resort city located on the Atlantic coast of South Carolina she figured she could earn good money while working in local bars and restaurants by Doug's account he dropped her off at a truck stop and left her there since she didn't have enough clothes he gave her a t-shirt and shorts he also gave her some money for coffee and newspapers upon wishing her good luck he drove away in an effort to expose Doug the police tested him on a lie detector but he passed the test detectives also tested the man with whom Michelle had been staying before her disappearance but no evidence of his complicity in The Disappearance could be discovered police started to entertain the theory that Michelle had indeed gone to Myrtle Beach which is about 250 miles from Spartanburg a few more weeks passed but there was no word from Michelle the anxiety of her family and friends was only growing regardless of the anger and resentment Michelle felt toward her parents they did not believe that she could have simply abandoned her family and gone into hiding Michelle's prolonged absence made the local sheriff wonder about her intentions after all when people travel for a long time they at least carry some personal belongings with them while Michelle had left with practically nothing in addition she had a pet a dog which she loved very much and to which she was very attached no matter who the detectives interviewed everyone stated that Michelle would never have abandoned the animal of her own free will meanwhile her parents started driving around the neighborhood in hopes of finding any trace of their daughter having received multiple reports that Michelle had been cited on a beach in North Carolina they headed there immediately they spent three days actively searching for her putting up Flyers talking to locals but all of this eventually came to no avail after six months of unsuccessful searches Laura Andrews began to have doubts about whether her behavior towards her daughter was right she had seen that her daughter was on a path of self-destruction and she could not just watch she wished to protect her in any way she could furthermore Laura feared that the effects of the vicious attack that Michelle had suffered in 1999 might also have contributed to her disappearance she could not forgive herself for the word she said to her daughter after she survived the attack although it was a horrible act on the part of a man the mother believed that Michelle was to blame because she had chosen this path herself and had hurt herself as a result her words came as another wound to Michelle's self-esteem foreign the Sheriff's Office assumed that Michelle did indeed have motives for escaping because of her reputation the detectives thought that eventually sooner or later she would be arrested somewhere however A year had passed and the search still hadn't yielded any results the thing that really alarmed the cops was that Michelle didn't leave any digital Footprints this was certainly not a good sign police and family members both wondered if Michelle had been the victim of a crime after all perhaps some truck driver took advantage of her vulnerability however even that theory was never substantiated two more years passed the police station didn't get any tip-off messages for a long time then on the third anniversary of Michelle's disappearance after police along with Laura Andrews visited the truck stop where Michelle was last seen local TV stations turned their attention back to the story and just days after Michelle's story appeared on television news the Spartanburg County Sheriff's Office received a strange letter the letter was Anonymous and handwritten on a small sheet of paper it stated that the author knew the whereabouts of Michelle Whitaker's body the letter was appended with a small homemade map showing the precise location of the body the letter was written in a competent and proper manner which lented some credibility the next day the sheriff taking search dogs with him went to a Countryside area that was 25 miles from where Michelle had last been seen her loved ones were distraught three years later and didn't know what to think some were resigned to the idea that Michelle was no longer among the living While others against the odds kept on believing that she was alive and safe search dogs were unsuccessful in detecting any scent and the search was eventually abandoned while the investigators were glad they hadn't found a body they were still puzzled by the letter they received a handwriting analysis and a DNA sample collected from the envelope LED them to believe that the letter was written by a woman however the specific author was not identified it wasn't long afterward that new headlines appeared in the newspapers which further horrified Michelle's family at the time the Dana Satterfield case was one of the highest profile cases in Spartanburg County 27 year old Dana Satterfield owned and operated her own beauty salon off Highway 221 in Roebuck South Carolina on July 31 1995 just before her beauty salon closed Dana was viciously attacked and was not able to survive the sheriff discovered her semi-nude body in a back room police got a DNA sample from the crime scene but at the time could not determine who it belonged to seven years later in August 2002 Michelle Whitaker went missing a month and a half later on September 24 2002 20 year old Heather sellers vanished Without a Trace the last person Heather was seen with was her ex-fiancee Jonathan Vick as they were investigating Heather's disappearance the police made a connection between Jonathan Vick and the death of Dana Satterfield and it was his DNA that was found at the crime ten years after her death in 2005 Vic was arrested he was only 17 years old when he committed the crime in December 2006 he was sentenced to life in prison while Vic was the prime suspect in The Disappearance of his ex-fiancee Heather sellers police have been unsuccessful in finding evidence to indict him and the case still stands unsolved Heather and Michelle vanished about 50 days apart however something more linked them together they both used to work at Waffle House knew each other and both had been seen with Jonathan Vick when Vic was arrested in 2005 Michelle's family members were shaken and suspected she might have been among his victims Vic was interrogated about Heather Sellers and Michelle Whitaker but he denied any connection to their disappearance ultimately with no evidence the investigation into the two cases came to a standstill at the time [Music] in 2006 Michelle's parents moved to Rock Hill South Carolina a town 65 miles from Spartanburg one year later the entire family gathered at the church on the fifth anniversary of Michelle's disappearance Michelle's Mother Laura Andrews was unwilling to treat the Gathering as a memorial service after all the body had never been found and there remained a faint hope that Michelle might be alive another year passed the investigation of The Disappearance of Michelle was transferred to detective William Gary who at that point was engaged in the investigation of a dozen unsolved cases and the case of Michelle Whitaker was one of them her case was considered a felony since many years had gone by without any evidence that Michelle was still alive this was a serious reason for the investigators to believe that something terrible had happened the sixth anniversary of Michelle Whitaker's disappearance was approaching on August 4th 2008 detective Gary got a call from a woman informing him that she knew of Michelle's whereabouts and that she was indeed alive she stated that Michelle was currently residing in the state of Oregon the woman had seen Michelle's file on an episode of Forensic Files as well as a website that Laura had created she recognized Michelle as a woman who had been living with her friends following six years of fruitlessly searching for Michelle Whitaker the investigators were naturally hesitant after receiving such a message eager for proof detective William Gary requested that the woman send him a picture of Michelle Gary showed the picture to detective wood who had previously handled the case he instantly recognized her an Oregon State police officer was promptly sent to the address in question to make an accurate identity check by an ironic coincidence on August 5th 2008 the same day Michelle argued with her mother and left home six years ago a detective called Laura Andrews and told her that her daughter had been found alive Laura couldn't fully comprehend the meaning of what she heard and it wasn't until she put the phone down that a multitude of questions emerged in her mind where is she how is she where has she been this whole time in spite of the good news a family reunion was not possible at that point the police respected Michelle's privacy and couldn't let her parents know her whereabouts she should have called home herself the detectives had no choice but to attempt to persuade Michelle to talk to her relatives if only to calm them down the next evening Michelle did call her mother after two more weeks at the Atlanta airport Michelle and her family finally met for the first time in a very long time Michelle admitted that she was tired of living the way she used to following her fight with her mom she determined that her family would be better off without her originally when Doug dropped her off at the truck stop she had intended to go to Myrtle Beach and find a job there but she had hitched a ride and wound up in Las Vegas then California and eventually Oregon Michelle apologized to her family and the police who spent energy and resources looking for her for all six years she had been living under her real name and didn't think anyone was searching for her

Channel: Checkered Sky - True Crime

Views: 100,086

Keywords: True, crime, true crime, true crime documentary, Michele Whitaker, Michelle Whitaker, Michele Whitaker case, true crime channel, The Heartbreaking Case, investigation, detective, disappearance, girl disappeared, crime investigation, case solved, solved, disappearance of girl solved, detective stories, documentary, Case of Michele Whitaker

Id: ZADD4QgwXVI

Length: 15min 16sec (916 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 14 2023