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Crime Junkie

MISSING: The Mishawaka Girls

Tue, 6 May 2025

Description

Nic Monroe is in a rut. At twenty-four, she lives alone in a dinky apartment in her hometown of Mishawaka, Indiana, she’s just gotten a DWI, and she works the same dead-end job she’s been working since high school, a job she only has because her boss is a family friend and feels sorry for her. Everyone has felt sorry for her for the last seven years—since the day her older sister, Kasey, vanished without a trace.On the night Kasey went missing, her car was found over a hundred miles from home. The driver’s door was open and her purse was untouched in the seat next to it. The only real clue in her disappearance was Jules Connor, another young woman from the same area who disappeared in the same way, two weeks earlier. But with so little for the police to go on, both cases eventually went cold.Nic wants nothing more than to move on from her sister’s disappearance and the state it’s left her in. But then one day, Jules’s sister, Jenna Connor, walks into Nic’s life and offers her something she hasn’t felt in a long time: hope. What follows is a gripping tale of two sisters who will do anything to find their missing halves, even if it means destroying everything they’ve ever known.The Missing Half is OUT NOW! Buy your copy at your local bookstore or order online here: https://bit.ly/themissinghalf Don’t miss out on all things Crime Junkie!Instagram: @crimejunkiepodcast | @audiochuckTwitter: @CrimeJunkiePod | @audiochuckTikTok: @crimejunkiepodcastFacebook: /CrimeJunkiePodcast | /audiochuckllcCrime Junkie is hosted by Ashley Flowers and Brit Prawat. Instagram: @ashleyflowers | @britprawatTwitter: @Ash_Flowers | @britprawatTikTok: @ashleyflowerscrimejunkieFacebook: /AshleyFlowers.AF Text Ashley at 317-733-7485 to talk all things true crime, get behind the scenes updates, and more!

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Transcription

Chapter 1: Who are Jules Connor and Casey Munro?

0.569 - 26.639 Ashley Flowers

Hi, Crime Junkies. I'm your host, Ashley Flowers. And I'm Britt. Now, listen, there is not a lot of information that has been shared yet in the story I'm about to tell you, which is why it's going to be so brief. But what we do have points to a perpetrator's bizarre and unsettling MO. And I think I know exactly where we can find answers. This is the story of Jules Conner and Casey Munro.

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Chapter 2: What happened the night Jules Connor went missing?

58.928 - 74.435 Ashley Flowers

It's 3 a.m. on August 4th, 2012, when Jenna Connor wakes up alone at the home she shares with her sister, Jules. Now, when she went to get a glass of water, she was surprised to see the door to Jules' room open. and an empty bed inside.

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74.456 - 88.466 Ashley Flowers

Because even though Jules worked a late shift at the dive bar, this place called Harry's over in South Bend, Indiana that night, like she would normally be home by like one or two in the morning. So it's weird that it's three and she's not. And at first, Jenna tried just calling her a few times.

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88.527 - 101.136 Ashley Flowers

Like she knew that Jules' car was pretty unreliable, though, you know, she would have thought that if something had happened, like she would have expected to see a missed call from Jules at some point, like if she got stranded, you know, but you just never know. So she's trying to call her.

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Chapter 3: How did Jenna Connor react to her sister's disappearance?

102.137 - 123.566 Ashley Flowers

When call after call went unanswered, anxiety began to build in Jenna until she physically just couldn't sit still and wait anymore. Like, she had to go looking for her sister. Now, she tried Harry's, but it was long past closed. There weren't even any cars in the lot when she got there, which at first brought a little bit of relief. Like, maybe she was being a dramatic older sister.

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123.666 - 145.757 Ashley Flowers

Like, if Jules left in her car, maybe she had just gone over to a friend's or who knows. Yeah. And she felt better, but there was still something sitting in the back of her mind, like, what if? What if she was on the side of the road somewhere? Jenna hadn't passed her car anywhere on the road as she had driven two Harrys from their place, but she knew that there was more than one way to get there.

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145.897 - 160.007 Ashley Flowers

So to quiet that last little whisper in her mind, she told herself she would just go home one other route that she knew her sister might sometimes take. She wasn't going to find anything, right? Like that's what she's telling herself, but it would help her sleep. She hoped she wouldn't find anything.

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160.848 - 181.71 Ashley Flowers

But as the couple of shopping strips faded into cornfields and tree lines and the streetlights disappeared, her headlights hit on something that made all of her fear come roaring back till it was like ringing in her ears. It was Jules' car on the side of the road with the driver's side door open.

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Chapter 4: What did Jenna find while searching for Jules?

182.33 - 192.34 Ashley Flowers

And when she gets a closer look, she sees her sister's phone, wallet, money, everything is sitting on the passenger seat. But Jules is nowhere to be found.

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192.74 - 195.983 Brit Prawat

And you said this was a road she probably would have taken before. Yeah.

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196.334 - 204.539 Ashley Flowers

Yeah, this is a pretty common route between where the bar was in South Bend and their house in Osceola. And like they grew up in Mishawaka right in the middle of the two.

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204.759 - 211.443 Brit Prawat

Yeah, I can like close my eyes and picture the road you're talking about. Like it's the kind of road that you know like the back of your head if you grew up there.

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211.584 - 236.712 Ashley Flowers

Right. Now, even though Jenna goes to police and even though the circumstances are fishy as hell, her sister's disappearance doesn't quite get the urgency she knows it deserves. Even the media won't really pick up Jewel's story. But everyone takes notice when just two weeks later, another young woman from Mishawaka goes missing and there are eerie parallels to when Jewel's disappeared.

237.432 - 258.767 Ashley Flowers

So this is on August 17th. 19-year-old Casey Monroe's car is found abandoned by a family who are on a road trip. And her car is found exactly the same way as Jules. Driver's side door open, all her personal belongings on the passenger seat. The only difference is her car is found up in Grand Rapids, Michigan. And her family says she didn't really know anyone up there.

258.847 - 270.873 Ashley Flowers

She didn't have any reason to be going up there the day that she went missing. And when the media picks up on this second disappearance, like they're quick to connect the cases, dubbing them the missing Mishawaka girls since both were from Mishawaka.

271.373 - 288.128 Ashley Flowers

And even though police have that same inclination, the thing is they can't find any connection between the two young women other than where they grew up as kids and then how they disappeared. There doesn't seem to be any overlap, so the cases end up getting worked separately by two different agencies. They're not working together.

288.689 - 297.001 Ashley Flowers

And so years end up going by without them ever identifying a suspect in either case, much less proving that they're connected.

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