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

Published: Jan. 12, 2021, 5:01 a.m.

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Melissa opens Season 4 with a vexing case out of Soutwest Ohio \\u2013 the town of Kettering, where on February 7, 1999, nine year-old Erica Baker took her aunt\\u2019s dog for a walk and never returned.\\xa0\\xa0The dog, with leash still attached, was found just an hour after Erica left the house.\\xa0\\xa0And this disappearance is not just frustrating and sad (as all cold or missing person cases are).\\xa0 It is also weird.\\xa0\\xa0Because even though someone was arrested and convicted of being involved in young Erica\\u2019s death, it really\\u2026wasn\\u2019t\\u2026solved.\\xa0\\xa0It seems that witness accounts indicated that Erica may have been struck by a van near the recreation center where the dog was found.\\xa0 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.\\xa0\\xa0But then he changed the story \\u2013 claiming one of the others \\u2013 on Jan Marie Franks (now deceased) \\u2013 was actually driving the van.\\xa0 Today he claims that all of his confessions were untrue and that he wasn\\u2019t involved at all in Erica\\u2019s disappearance.\\xa0\\xa0Police have spent innumerable hours and dollars looking for Erica\\u2019s remains based on Gabriel\\u2019s various confessions, but have never found anything.\\xa0\\xa0Eventually Gabriel and his cohorts were convicted of the Meijer robbery \\u2013 and Gabriel was convicted in 2005 of gross abuse of a corpse and tampering with evidence.\\xa0 Gabriel served six years in prison and has been free since 2011.\\xa0\\xa0And through all of this, no one has actually been convicted of killing Erica Baker \\u2013 and neither she, her remains nor any sign of her whatsoever has emerged.\\xa0 If you know anything that may lead to the truth about what happened to her \\u2013 or where her remains might be found, please call the Kettering Police Department at (937) 296-2555.

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