Julie Mott had spent her entire life fighting cystic fibrosis. After she died at just 25 years old, her family gathered at a San Antonio funeral home to say goodbye on what would have been her 26th birthday.

Hours later, the funeral home locked its doors for the night.

By the next morning, Julie was gone.

Someone knows what happened to Julie Mott.

The question is who.

Sources

• NBC News — initial reporting on Julie Mott's disappearance and the search for her body
• CBS News — early coverage naming Bill Wilburn as a person of interest
• KSAT (San Antonio) — ongoing coverage from 2015 through 2019, including Wilburn's arrest, GPS monitoring and trespassing conviction, the civil trial, the courtroom casket demonstration, and the jury's $8 million verdict
• San Antonio Current — civil trial coverage, including the Nicholas Moreno storyline
• KENS5 — civil trial coverage and attorney statements
• Spectrum News — Dick Tips's response to the verdict
• Texas Hill Country — feature coverage of the case
• Find A Grave — Julie Mott's memorial and biographical details
• SA Legal Solutions — law firm summary of the civil trial
• Fourth Court of Appeals of Texas — the 2019 appellate ruling that vacated the judgment following settlement
• Cystic Fibrosis Foundation — FDA approval of Trikafta
• Pushing Up Lilies (podcast) — background on subcontractor building access

In the middle of the night, a window shattered on the 13th floor of a Manhattan hotel. Moments later, government scientist Frank Olson was found dying on the sidewalk below.

Authorities called it suicide.

But Frank worked inside some of the most secretive programs in the United States government and in the days before his death, something had gone terribly wrong.

It would take 22 years for his family to learn the first secret the government had kept from them. And once they did, they began questioning everything they had been told about Frank's death.

Was this really a tragic suicide or was there another reason Frank Olson went through that window?

This is the case of Frank Olson.

Sources

• John Marks, The Search for the Manchurian Candidate — ch. 5, full text. Source for the real Gottlieb and Ruwet quotes.
• National Security Archive — Vincent Ruwet's Dec. 1, 1953 statement on Olson's death.
• Frank Olson Project — James Starrs' exhumation memorandum. Backbone of the entire Scene Six autopsy material.
• Olson v. United States, 953 F. Supp. 2d 23 (D.D.C. 2013) — the actual court opinion, including Judge Boasberg's quote.
• A Study of Assassination — the declassified CIA manual, via The Black Vault.
• The Washington Post — 1994 exhumation coverage ("Digging for New Evidence," "Tests Contradict U.S. Story of Man's Suicide").
• The Baltimore Sun — 1994 exhumation coverage ("Study of Exhumed Body Hints at Homicide").
• CovertAction Magazine — "There's Something Rotten in Denmark," source for the Cournoyer/torture material.
• New York Review of Books — the Ignatieff/Leitenberg exchange on the biological-weapons motive.
• The New York Times — "Sidney Gottlieb, 80, Dies" (1999), source for the 174-day LSD dosing detail.

Twenty-three-year-old Phoenix Coldon left her family’s home on a Sunday afternoon in December 2011 and never returned.

Hours later, her Chevy Blazer was found abandoned across state lines in East St. Louis. Her purse, wallet, glasses and other belongings were still inside. But Phoenix was nowhere to be found.

As her family searched for answers, they discovered a side of Phoenix’s life they never knew existed.

Nearly fifteen years later, three major theories remain. Did Phoenix leave intentionally? Or was foul play involved?

This is the disappearance of Phoenix Coldon.

Sources:

• Disappearance of Phoenix Coldon, Wikipedia
• Death of Stacey English, Wikipedia
• Phoenix Lucille Coldon, The Charley Project
• Missing Phoenix: Coldon family asks UMSL community for help, UMSL Daily
• Police in Atlanta and St. Louis Search for Missing Black Women, ABC News
• Body identified as missing Ga. woman Stacey English, CBS News
• Missing in America: Phoenix Coldon, NBC News
• Phoenix Coldon's mysterious disappearance perplexes retired officer in new doc, Fox News
• Phoenix Coldon: Cruel Hoax Costs Family Their Life Savings and Home, HuffPost via MadameNoire
• Phoenix's Mom Talks Heartbreak, TV One
• The Disappearance of Phoenix Coldon coverage, Oxygen (8 articles)