MARTINA GREEN: When you’re a resident of Herron Mills, you know everyone. I’ve known Zoe since I was a baby; her sister Aster is my best friend. I’m telling you this in the interest of full disclosure. I’m not an unbiased reporter, an outsider looking in. I’m not someone with a twenty-year career in journalism behind me, although I hope I will be someday. But I don’t think that’s what we need to find Zoe. I think we need an insider. Someone who knows this community, knows the people, isn’t afraid to ask the tough questions the police don’t seem interested in exploring.
ASSISTANT DETECTIVE PHILIP MASSEY: It’s not illegal to disappear.
MARTINA GREEN: I spoke to Assistant Detective Philip Massey, one of the officers on the Zoe Spanos case, over the phone.
AD MASSEY: I can’t comment specifically on the Spanos case, but in general, you’re an adult, it’s perfectly legal to leave your life behind. Start a new one. Might be hurtful or unkind, but there’s no law you have to tell anyone where you’re going.
MARTINA GREEN: Why can’t you discuss Zoe specifically? Didn’t your office close the investigation last week?
AD MASSEY: As our office stated publicly last Friday, there is strong evidence to suggest Miss Spanos willingly left Herron Mills on the night of December thirty-first last year. That’s all I can say. It’s still an open investigation.
MARTINA GREEN: The investigation may still technically remain open, but it’s clear that local police have wound down their search. Yes, Zoe is nineteen. Yes, that means she’s an adult in the eyes of law enforcement, allowed to step willingly away from her sophomore year at Brown, from her holiday at home with her family and friends, and start over somewhere new. No note. No explanation. No news, six weeks later.
But I don’t buy it, and that’s why I’m here. I’m angry, and that’s why I’m here.
So, let’s go back to late December of last year. For those of you who have been following Zoe’s case, none of this will come as new information. Everything I’m about to recap was widely reported on the news during the days and weeks that followed Zoe’s disappearance. But it’s important to start with the facts we can agree upon, the things that are known. And to examine critically the way in which law enforcement approached the case once Zoe was reported missing.
Before she disappeared, Zoe had been home from Brown for about two weeks, spending time with her family. Several Herron Mills residents saw Zoe around town.
JUDITH HODGSON: She spent a few afternoons at the library. Nothing unusual about that. Zoe always was very serious about her studies.
MARTINA GREEN: That was Judith Hodgson, reference librarian at the Herron Mills Public Library. I personally saw Zoe twice, once at the grocery store, where she was helping her mom with the shopping, and again on the day after Christmas, when Aster and I spent the afternoon together at the Spanos house. Zoe was baking cookies in the kitchen. We talked for a few minutes about the marine bio internship she’d done in California over the summer and the advanced research course she’d be taking in the spring.
PROFESSOR DAVID BRECHER: I was looking forward to working with Miss Spanos this spring. She made quite a case to get into my class. I have a firm policy about restricting admission to upperclassmen. But Miss Spanos had completed the prerequisites early, and she showed a great deal of promise.
MARTINA GREEN: Professor David Brecher spoke with me on the phone from his office at Brown. Why would Zoe campaign to get into that course if she wasn’t planning to return to school? There was nothing in Zoe’s behavior that pointed to a girl making plans to sever ties, to vanish into the night.
Fast forward to New Year’s Eve, a Tuesday: Zoe left the house around nine o’clock. She told her parents that she was meeting friends at a nearby house party thrown by Jacob Trainer, a Jefferson alum from Zoe’s class. Multiple sources, including Zoe’s friend Lydia Sommer, confirm she never made it to that party.
LYDIA SOMMER: I texted her a few times that night—no response. Which wasn’t like Zoe at all.
MARTINA GREEN: Is it possible that she went to Jacob’s with someone else? That you might have missed her?
LYDIA SOMMER: No way. If Zoe was there, I would have known. Someone would have seen her. It was almost all Jefferson alum at that party. We all knew each other. Zoe never showed up that night.
MARTINA GREEN: The next morning, Mr. and Mrs. Spanos woke to the realization that Zoe had not returned home. If you read the comments on the news articles that ran in the following days or dive into the Reddit thread about Zoe’s case, you’ll see that many people were immediately critical of their parenting, but let’s remember: Zoe is nineteen and a sophomore in college. Her parents were used to her living away from home, where she’d been an A student at an Ivy League college. And as the police have been so quick to emphasize, Zoe is an adult. Her parents knew where she was going, to a party within walking distance from their home. She hadn’t had a curfew since high school. Let’s stop blaming the Spanos family. They didn’t do anything wrong.
In fact, they did exactly what they should have done. The morning of Wednesday, January first, when Zoe wasn’t responding to phone calls or texts, Mr. Spanos called nine-one-one.
911 DISPATCHER [RECORDING]: Nine-one-one, what’s your emergency?
MARTINA GREEN: It was New Year’s Day, and local police had been dealing with their share of calls throughout the night and into the morning: two separate car accidents on Grove and Ocean Avenue, noise complaints, vandalism, a stolen boat—we’re going to get back to that in a minute—littering, trespassing, you name it. If you’re going to go missing, New Year’s Eve is probably just about the worst time to do it.
Or the best time to disappear, if you believe the police.
GEORGE SPANOS [RECORDING]: My name is George Spanos, and my daughter Zoe is missing. We’re at Forty-Five Crescent Circle, Herron Mills, New York. She didn’t come home last night.
MARTINA GREEN: Nine-one-one dispatch transferred Mr. Spanos to the local police. We don’t have access to that recording, but according to TV interviews that ran in the following week, they told Mr. Spanos to check local hospitals and call around to Zoe’s friends and their parents. They told him that Zoe had probably spent the night at a friend’s house, and perhaps her phone battery had died. They told him to do his due diligence, but to try not to worry. Zoe wasn’t a minor. She was responsible and bright. What the police suggested was a perfectly plausible scenario. The most likely scenario. It made sense. But it was wrong.
The Spanoses made those calls. Zoe had not been admitted to any hospital on Long Island. No one had seen her. She had not been to Jacob Trainer’s party. She hadn’t called anyone to say she wasn’t going to make it. She hadn’t responded when three separate friends, including Lydia Sommer, checked in via phone or text between 11:35 p.m. and 1:17 a.m.
Zoe Spanos walked out of her house in Herron Mills around nine o’clock on New Year’s Eve and vanished into thin air.
On the morning of Thursday, January second, when Zoe had still not come home or contacted anyone to say she was okay, the police finally started searching. A pair of officers went door to door in the neighborhood. Zoe was declared a missing person, her photo and description shared with local news. The police worked with the Spanos family to organize a search party for the morning of January fourth, to comb the woods behind the Spanos property. But by the fourth, they had uncovered something else.