The Skeleton Key Chronicles

10 hours ago

A search is expanding today in Great Smoky Mountains National Park after a man disappeared from an area that anyone familiar with Gatlinburg will probably recognize.

Marcin Bachleda-Blaszczak was last seen around Sugarlands Visitor Center on August 22nd. His vehicle was later found in the visitor center parking lot, but Marcin wasn't reported missing until the evening of August 24th.

And the fact that his car was found at Sugarlands leaves a lot of possibilities for where Marcin could have gone from there. If you've ever driven in that area you probably are familar with the place. It's the visitors center that sits just a couple of miles outside downtown Gatlinburg, along the river right at one of the main gateways into the national park. There are trails all around it, trail maps and plenty of hiking information available inside.

Rangers initially established a search perimeter around the Sugarlands area. As of Friday, August 28th, that search is being expanded with help from other agencies. Anyone with information is being asked to contact Great Smoky Mountains National Park dispatch.

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The Skeleton Key Chronicles

14 hours ago

On an overcast, drizzly August morning in 1994, 18-year-old Shaylene Marie Farrell left her home in Piqua, Ohio, to make what should have been a quick trip to the grocery store for some iced tea.

Later that day, her mother's silver Chevrolet Malibu was found sitting in the Pick-N-Save parking lot, but there was no sign of Shaylene. She was supposed to be back there for her 7:00 p.m. shift that evening, but she never showed up.

There was nothing to suggest Shaylene had planned to go anywhere else that day. She hadn't packed a bag or taken along the kinds of belongings you might expect if she intended to leave town, and her family didn't believe she had simply taken off. Investigators initially considered that possibility, but eventually came to believe something had happened to her.

One detail that has continued to come up in Shaylene's case involves a club in Greenville, Ohio, where she was reportedly seen in the days before she disappeared. Investigators looked at people connected to the club and believed someone from that circle might know more about what happened to her.

At some point, investigators received information that led them to search a wooded area near Union City, Ohio, close to the Indiana border. The search turned up nothing.

And more than three decades later, that's the frustrating part of Shaylene's case. Investigators have followed leads and even searched a specific area for her, but whatever happened after she arrived at Pick-N-Save that August morning has never been determined. Shaylene Marie Farrell is still missing.

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The Skeleton Key Chronicles

1 day ago

More than 25 years ago, Regina “Gina” Bos spent an October night doing something she loved, singing at an open mic night at Duggan’s Pub in downtown Lincoln, Nebraska. The 40-year-old mother of three was expected home afterward, but sometime after leaving the pub around 1 a.m., Gina simply disappeared. Her car hadn’t gone anywhere, though. It was still parked across the street from Duggan’s, and when it was found later that day, her guitar and sheet music were inside the trunk, which had been left slightly open. Gina’s purse, however, wasn’t found in the car.

Gina’s boyfriend, Michael Johnson, had originally planned to go to the open mic with her but changed his mind, so Gina dropped him off at his house before heading to Duggan’s. The plan was for her to pick him up again afterward, but she never arrived. When Michael tried paging her later that morning, the pager was at Gina’s house with her children, and the sound woke them. Once it became clear that nobody knew where Gina was, she was reported missing at 6:38 a.m.

Police began searching for Gina that same day and talking with people who had been at Duggan’s the night before. But Gina wasn’t found, and as the years passed, her disappearance remained unsolved.

By 2018, one of the original detectives revealed something investigators had never been able to act on. He believed Gina knew the person responsible for her disappearance, and when asked whether he thought he knew who that person was, he said yes. The problem was that police didn’t have enough probable cause to make an arrest.

And that makes what is happening now especially interesting. Earlier this week, Lincoln Police announced they had received a new lead in Gina’s case, and it was enough to prompt additional investigative work in both July and August. They haven’t said what they were told or what investigators have been doing, only that the results of those efforts aren’t known yet.

After more than 25 years, it sounds like investigators have something new to work with. Whether or not it will finally lead to an answer in Gina’s case remains to be seen.

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