The Missing Woman Who Doesn't Exist

in 1989 an nbc owned chicago television station called wmaq were airing their regularly scheduled programming at the end of the night they showed viewers what they almost always broadcasted a series of public service announcements talking about things like drug use public projects that were in the works and events that were coming up at the very end of these psas they showed viewers the poster of a person who recently went missing again this was a typical thing to do but on this night the missing person section of the programming had a different feel to it see it for yourself [Music] this picture eerily broadcasted until the next morning and years later it's still disturbing and confusing to the people who have seen it the disturbing part is obvious this picture is nothing like your typical missing person's photo we can barely make out a person at all and the image shows us no discernible features whatsoever it's eerie to look at and i can imagine seeing this image in the middle of the night with nothing but sharp static playing in the background would be a very eerie experience however the real confusing part about this poster is that according to any real documentation joanna lopez the person in this photo doesn't exist i don't mean that joanna is a made-up entity i simply mean that there is no proof that a person with this name was actually missing in chicago in the late 80s there are no missing reports no news articles and from what people have been gathering there are no other reports about this missing case on any other television programs apart from wmaq essentially this is the only known report of joanna's disappearance fortunately there has been a resurgence in the interest surrounding this case because of a video made by blame it on george where he talked about this picture as well as this there have been a couple of different subreddits that have been exploring the details of this case and they've actually pieced together a few details that give us some more context about who joanna could be so let's look at what people have found so far and see if we can find any answers at all firstly let's look at the actual poster all we have is a name a number and a photograph that shows us a person who isn't recognizable in the slightest the first important piece of info is the number a user over on reddit found the listing to this number and it leads us to the youth division of the chicago police department this is actually an important detail because it tells us that joanna was almost definitely under the age of 18 when this poster was aired another piece of information that supports that theory is the youtube channel that posted the original video it's called the museum of classic chicago television and it's the page that archived this report in the description of the video they explain what the psas are and right at the end they briefly described the photo as missing child alert slide joanna lopez so joanna was by the channel standards a child but her specific age wasn't actually given as you can easily tell no other information about joanna was given and this is not common if you look at any other slides you can notice a stark difference in the way that they usually convey this type of information here's an example of a similar report that was also done in the 1980s now age 16 last seen yuba city california november 27 1984 call 800-843-5678 as you can see they normally showed the missing person's height their age where they were last seen and most importantly a clear image of the actual person this slide shows us none of that and if it wasn't for the listing and the video's description we wouldn't be able to tell if joanna was an adult or a minor so now that we've established that joanna is underage we can take a look at the picture in closer detail at first glance it's not a lot of help but another user on reddit enhanced the photo and attempted to add some color to it this was the result and although it's not a very clear image it does give us a couple of details like the fact that joanna is wearing glasses and the fact that this person is probably a teenager if joanna was a teenager then it supports a theory that is quite popular this theory suggests that joanna was a young woman who either came from a troubled family or a care home and that she ran away from whatever house she was staying in if this was a regular occurrence then it would make sense that a missing report was not filed and if she was found quickly then it would also make sense that this story came and went however there is another detail of this story that i have deliberately left out until now because it pokes holes in this theory that detail is the fact that this broadcast was not the only time that this slide was shown like i've said before this is the only known station to ever share this poster but they did actually share it on two occasions once in 1989 and one final time in 1991 two years later as you can see the photos are the same but the picture is a small bit clearer they also only showed this slide for a few seconds and they did not broadcast it throughout the night it's a small detail but it tells us that there is a chance that joanna could have been missing for two years by the time the second slide was aired now it's entirely possible that joanna ran away on two separate occasions and they simply decided to use the same image twice but this second slide really opens the doors to many possibilities when it comes to this case it's important to note that people interested in this case have done their due diligence and scoured many different archives looking for any kind of information regarding joanna's disappearance things like ancestry.com the chicago tribune social media and similar news channels have been thoroughly scoured and while a few tidbits have been found here and there nothing substantial has come to light however reddit user proud evening star posted this link onto the thread that brings us to the doe network a database of unidentified homicide victims this particular page shows us a young woman who was killed in chicago in may of 1994. she was 5'11 weighed 120 pounds and was found in an alleyway behind south champlain avenue this alleyway is around 11 miles away from the chicago pd headquarters which is also where the postcode from the listing we mentioned earlier brings us the killer was caught and was sentenced to prison but he stated that he did not know what this woman's name was she was allegedly a prostitute that he hired and they never exchanged any details her age is listed as 18 to 22. if we were to make a rough estimate and put joanna's age at 15 in 1989 and 17 in 1991 then she would be around 20 in 1994 this would put her right in the middle of this estimate but that's simply a wild guess and it doesn't really do much for us this is where not having any of the information on the missing poster is really detrimental to the case we have all the specifics of the jane doe and no specifics whatsoever on joanna lopez it's essentially another brick wall in a very frustrating series of dead ends if you just straight up google this case you can spend a few hours running into all sorts of dead ends there is a website called defrosting cold cases that has a decent enough ride up on this case where they link a handful of interesting sites but again there's nothing really that tells us anything that could be overly useful in finding out the identity of joanna let's wrap this up by delving into the most popular theory surrounding this case it goes as follows joanna lopez was a teenage girl aged 13 to 15 in 1989 who likely said earlier came from a troubled home or a foster home she was most likely a frequent flyer meaning she ran away from her home consistently she did this in 1989 and a poorly made missing poster was created an overexposed photocopy of this poster was made and sent to the local television network they aired it for the night she was either found relatively quickly which is the reason no missing person's report was ever created or if a report was made it was protected because she was a minor the same incident happened again two years later in 1991 and they simply sent the same poster to the network or they simply reused the one that they already had this theory simply stated that joanna had a hard upbringing she ran away a lot and that's why there's no documentation on her that's actually the most optimistic theory because it would suggest that she was found and could still be alive today i suppose the most fortunate thing about having such little information is that there also isn't an obituary report that correlates with this case all in all this theory is much more positive than the alternative one last thing i want to say is that this is the internet believe it or not and 1989 was not a hundred years ago so if you're watching this video now and you happen to live in chicago in the late 80s or the early 90s and you knew a joanna who wore glasses ask them about this picture even if their name isn't joanna just ask around your old friends see if we can get any answers that would be great you should probably give them some context first because if you just send them this picture with no explanation they will probably block you seriously though like i said share this image around see if we can try and find some answers and finally put the joana lopez case to bed thank you for watching i will see you in the next video you

Channel: Deburke321

Views: 1,004,209

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Id: Budtqc2wZGc

Length: 9min 41sec (581 seconds)

Published: Sat Dec 18 2021