Pop Spotlight

Sarah Turney is best known for running a media campaign to pressure police to arrest her father for the murder of her sister, Alissa Turney, who went missing in 2001. The years-long mission, which included a blog, Facebook and Instagram accounts, and a podcast called Voices for Justice, culminated in 2020. She started a TikTok channel that spring; in August, a grand jury indicted her father Michael Turney for second-degree homicide.

On her new podcast, Disappearances, a Spotify Original with Parcast, Turney narrates the stories of some of the world’s most infamous missing-persons cases. The first episode, coming September 9th, recaps the infamous case of 6-year-old Etan Patz, who vanished on his way to school in 1979 and became the first missing child to be pictured on a milk carton. (A nearby bodega worker, Pedro Hernandez, was found guilty of his murder in 2017.)  With new 40-minute episodes every Thursday, the pod will cover a group of Alcatraz escapees who were never found, a Rockefeller who went to New Guinea in search of art and adventure and never returned, the presumed drowning of Australian prime minister Harold Holt, and more.

Turney promises to explore the many different reasons people disappear, including people who vanish on purpose, and the impact their absence has on the people left behind. “I’ve never heard a missing persons case I didn’t want to explore in some capacity,” Turney told Rolling Stone in a statement. “What I find really interesting about the cases I discuss on Disappearances is the unique mix of historical cases weaved in with more current cases. Looking at our past is a great way to learn about how to help these cases today.”

At the end of each episode, Turney offers help to people who may be looking for a lost loved one by plugging Season of Justice, a nonprofit started by Audiochuck founder Ashley Flowers to provide funding to families and law enforcement agencies to help solve cold cases. Turney is a board member at the organization.