Disappeared (series)

Disappeared is a true crime series with 11 seasons.  These are 40-minute episodes about missing persons.

Focusing mostly on apparent suicides, this series is more National Enquirer than true crime documentary.  They include personal salacious information irrelevant to the disappearance simply for shock value.  They include a lot of intentional disinformation provided by family.  And they have poorly edited episodes which leads to misinterpretation of information.

Lack of Fact-Checking.  For example Season 7 Episode 1, the Jessica Heeringa case.  At one point they say there was no CCTV which could have solved this disappearance.  In fact, there was CCTV footage that did solve the crime.  They also didn’t mention she was abducted from her workplace which was adjacent to a prison hospital for hardcore sex offenders who would stop and get gas there, which was directly related to her abduction.  These kinds of major errors are prevalent throughout the series.

Family Disinformation.  Since most of the commentary is provided for by family, it includes a lot of intentional disinformation. Many are in denial about the victim’s apparent suicide.  Others downplay the victim’s drug addiction, violence, and criminal record.  For example, Season 8 Episode 3, the Kortne Stouffer case.  Kortne was a 21 year old alcoholic and drug addict who was prone to violence when she was drunk or high.  She as drunk or high most of the time.  Her parents’ response was that she was “just a hippie”.  She had already been in serious trouble with her landlord for harassing her neighbors.  Her parents’ response was to accuse the neighbors of stalking her.  Neighbors called police 6 times in the 24 hours before she disappeared because she was high, drunk, hitting and spitting on people, and incredibly loud.  She was confrontational and attacking people in the neighborhood and they’d had enough.  Her parents’ response was to say they all wanted to sleep with Kortne.  :0  The evening before she disappeared, she had gotten her 19 year old boyfriend drunk and so when police came, he was arrested.  Everyone knew this was her fault.  But, like her parents, she blamed everyone else.  This was a case where bad parenting created an adult who never accepted the consequences for her behavior.  Instead she blamed others.  She drank nonstop for 48 hours then wandered off and disappeared.  Many believe to kill herself because she’d hurt her boyfriend and he was done with her.  Her parents’ response was to bully the police into spending money on polygraphing the neighborhood then searching their homes and vehicles.

Many of this cases were solved.  Many were cases of suicides.  Many were obvious abductions.