The NQ77 Blog

Every morning, she dropped her children off at daycare. That routine — that ordinary, unremarkable act of motherhood — is one of the last images the world has of Kayla Atwood alive. She deserves to be known for more than the way she was lost.

Before Kayla Atwood's family filed a missing persons report, her ex-boyfriend was already at a neighbor's door asking to see security camera footage and telling people she had been kidnapped. Here is a complete breakdown of the evidence that convicted him — and the charge prosecutors chose to drop before trial.

On January 3, 2024, Kayla Atwood — a 32-year-old mother of four from Pensacola, Florida — dropped her children at daycare and vanished. Eight days later, the unthinkable. This week on The Last Known Moment, we examine a case her family says still has unanswered questions.

Before she became the subject of a years-long fight for justice, Tamla Horsford was a wife, a mother of five, and a woman her community adored. This is who she was.

The Forsyth County Sheriff's Office closed Tamla Horsford's case the same day she was found. A private forensic pathologist later documented injuries consistent with a physical altercation — not a fall. Here is a full breakdown of the evidence, the investigative failures, and what the GBI found when they finally looked.

Before she was a headline, before she was a case number -- Asha Jaquilla Degree was a fourth-grade girl who loved her family, packed their photographs when she left, and was afraid of the dark. This is who she was beyond the crime.

More than two decades after nine-year-old Asha Degree vanished into the dark on Valentine's Day 2000, investigators have a DNA suspect, a family of interest, a reclassified homicide, and a $100,000 reward -- but no arrest and no answers.

Ashley Loring HeavyRunner vanished from the Blackfeet Indian Reservation in June 2017. Nearly nine years later, her case remains open — a window into the evidence that was mishandled, the system that failed her, and the sister who refused to stop searching.

In June 2017, 20-year-old Ashley Loring HeavyRunner vanished from the Blackfeet Indian Reservation in Browning, Montana. Eight years later, her family is still searching. Her case is a window into one of the most devastating, under-reported crises in America — the epidemic of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women.

On January 24, 2006, 24-year-old Jennifer Kesse left her Orlando condo and was never seen again. Her car was found a mile away. A suspect was caught on camera. Their face was never seen. Nearly 20 years later, the case is no longer cold — but Jennifer has still not been found.

On June 13, 2001, 19-year-old Jason Jolkowski walked out of his Omaha, Nebraska home to meet a coworker — and was never seen again. Twenty-three years later, no body has been found, no suspect has been named, and his mother has spent a lifetime demanding answers.

He killed at least five people in California, sent coded letters to police daring them to catch him, and was never identified. Half a century later, the Zodiac remains one of the most disturbing unsolved cases in American criminal history.

New criminology research is challenging everything we thought we knew about criminal profiling. The science is more nuanced — and more disturbing — than any TV show suggests.

The disparity in media coverage for missing persons cases remains stark. Who gets covered, who gets ignored, and what we can do to change the conversation.

From the Golden State Killer to dozens of cold cases, genealogy databases are becoming one of law enforcement's most powerful tools. But at what privacy cost?

A deep dive into 10 cases that have haunted the country for decades — the evidence, the suspects, and why they remain open files in law enforcement databases.

Wrongful convictions are more common than most people realize. The Innocence Project has exonerated hundreds. We examine the systemic failures that put innocent people behind bars.

As a true crime creator, I wrestle with this question constantly. An honest look at the ethics of our genre and how we can do better.

Cell phone data, social media trails, and surveillance footage are transforming how detectives build cases. We break down how digital evidence is used — and misused — in trials.