I love a good missing persons case, my favorite type of mystery. The thought that there are all these people who simply slip off the face of the Earth, leaving only cryptic clues behind that raise more questions than answers. People whose fates will most likely be unknown for all time to everyone but themselves, and should it be the case, their captors.
But the mystery I have here is a unique one. The case of a missing person who may not exist, and a broadcast on a Chicago television news station so eerie and bizarre that one wonder's if it was legitimate or some kind of broadcast hijacking akin to the Max Headroom incident.
It is sadly often that we uncover the bodies of Jane and John Does. Bodies without identities, without records, without names. However, it's not often we have a case in which we have a name: Joanna Lopez, but no body, nor any trace that this person ever existed save one photograph that is of such poor quality that the face within it is nearly unrecognizable.
The story of Joanna Lopez is so mind boggling because her story is so bare of detail, making our minds go wild trying to fill in the gaps and make it make sense. So let's start with the beginning:
On the night of January the 14th, 1989, the NBC television affiliate WMAQ Chicago signed off at its usual hour (for the Zoomers around here - that's a thing television stations used to do back in the analog days! Look it up on Youtube). Immediately after the sign off, a very strange missing person's poster appeared on the screen, and remained there all night until morning when WMAQ's regular programming resumed. As you can see from the picture of it I added below as well as the video footage, the resolution and picture quality are so poor that it is nearly impossible to recognize any of their features. No audio accompanied the image. It laid over complete silence, save for the eerie sound of soft static from electrical feedback. It only served to make the broadcast even more creepy than it had to be. I know if I were a Chicago-ite back when I was a little kid, if that had come on my screen, I would have **** my ass. You can view it here:
Strangely missing are any other details about this girl. The poster contains no information pertaining to her height, weight, age, eye and hair color, or any details regarding when she was last seen or how long she's been missing. All the poster contains is her name, a banner with the word 'missing', and an accompanying phone number. The phone number is actually reveals one of very, very few clues: It rings up a division of the Chicago PD which specifically handles missing juveniles. So, at the very least, we know she is a minor.
However though, there is no information of the circumstances around her disappearance, such as if she was a runaway or taken against her will. There is no record of a missing Joanna Lopez on NamUS, NCMEC, or the Charley project. There is no trace of her in any newspaper. Google reveals nothing.
After the January 14th 1989 all night broadcast, nothing would be seen or heard of Joanna Lopez until 1991, when the same missing persons poster with the same awful quality picture once again appeared after WMAQ's nightly sign off, this time with the brightness and resolution of the image slightly tweaked - though unfortunately it did nothing to make her face any more recognizable. This time around, the broadcast only lasted 10 seconds. You can view the second broadcast here:
As far as leads go in her disappearance, they are far and few between. Folks on Reddit theorize that Joanna Lopez ran away from a group home, and was possibly a sex worker.
To this day, no friends or relatives of Joanna Lopez have ever been found, and there has not been a single trace of Joanna herself. This is a mystery within a mystery within a mystery. Why was such a poor quality photo used? Why was there no vital information listed on the missing poster? How did the broadcast even get on air in the first place, as it does not match the format of the usual reports of missing people that WMAQ airs? Is Joanna Lopez just a pseudonym, and is that why no record can be found of her or her disappearance? Why the hell did the broadcast need to be so damn creepy?
This case is certainly one that's fun to theorize about, and I sincerely hope one day we come up with some answers.
If you don't want to watch the video clips, here's the missing persons poster:
