On September 13th 2017, Lashinta Godden failed to arrive at an important work conference. Godden was a conscientious employee. Her manager at Delta Airlines contacted the police the following day, after all possible methods to make contact with her had been exhausted.

The police attended her home in Young Ln Stone Mountain. There were unwashed breakfast dishes in the sink. Her car, purse and keys were gone. The scene appeared as though she had just left for work.

Godden was in the process of divorcing her husband of a year, Marcus Godden, at the time of her disappearance. The police contacted Mr  Godden but he could add little of import.

The couple had married within two weeks of meeting.  After a year of marriage, he knew nothing about his wife's family or friends, other than the names of work colleagues or her upbringing or life before they met. Ms Godden simply refused to talk about the subject. She progressively became more guarded and hostile. This was the ultimate trigger for the divorce.

Mr Godden was 400 miles away in the days before and after Ms Godden's disappearance. This was confirmed by numerous witnesses.

Ms Godden's work colleagues were unable to provide any information either.

Three days after she was reported missing, a bloodstained shirt bearing the logo of Delta Airlines was found in a wooded area at the back of Biffle Park, a short distance from Godden’s home in Young Lane.

The amount of blood and the position of slash marks in the central front of the shirt indicated the wearer had been stabbed and was likely dead. DNA testing showed the blood belonged to Ms Godden.

In an effort to aid the investigation, Delta Airlines voluntarily turned over her personnel file to the police.

The file stated she had graduated Magna Cum Laude from Fordham University and, since graduation, had three previous employers.

Fordham university denied ever having Godden as a student.

Two out of the three employers existed in name only. The third had gone out of business before the time of her supposed employment.

Delta Airlines stated they had vetted her credentials, calling references and each of her former employers.

Closer investigation revealed that the telephone numbers and email addresses listed linked to a service that offers fake references and educational credentials to clients for a yearly fee.

The case went cold rapidly. The lead detective on the case, Jeffery Blankenship, decided to post Godden’s image on various missing person sites as a Jane Doe missing person.

Within a month, Ms Godden was identified as having been listed as a missing person three other times, under different names: Brittany Perry who vanished in 1997, Sarah Montez in 2001 and Jennifer Bolden-Hicks in 2007.

Law enforcement interviewed witnesses in each of the three missing persons cases attached to Godden. All positively identified Lashinta Godden as the respective missing person.

On August 9th 1997, around 7am, Brittany Perry (Godden) left her Barrio Logan home in South California, with the intention to crossing into Mexico on a day trip with a group of friends.

Godden/Perry had completed this trip several times before with the same group. She told her common law  husband, James Mercado, that she would be home by 6pm.

When Godden/Perry did not return at the expected time, Mercado texted her, then called but the calls all went straight to voicemail.

He called one of the friends she was travelling with. The friend informed him Godden/Perry had not arrived at the meeting point that morning. She had not travelled with them to Mexico.

Mercado called the police but was told he would have to wait to the following day before they would take a missing persons report.

At 12 noon on August 10th, a formal report was filed by Mercado.

Mercado and Godden/Perry had been living together approximately eighteen months at the time of her disappearance. They met whilst working on collection trucks for the Department of Sanitation. The couple had no history of relationship issues or violence.

Godden/Perry never spoke of her childhood or family but once stated she was from the Seattle region. Mercado believed this to be a lie.

In early 1996, Mercado and Goddens/Perry took a trip to Joshua Tree National Park. They stopped at a gas station in Palm Desert, California. He overheard Godden/Perry speak to a clerk. The man seemed to recognise her and they were discussing a matter the required time-specific local knowledge of that area. When she returned to the car, Mercado asked Godden/Perry about it. She said she thought the man had mistaken her for someone else and had just played along. He found her explanation unconvincing.

A week after her disappearance, Mercado was cleaning out the trash can in the bathroom the couple shared. He found a positive pregnancy test. He was unaware of the pregnancy, as were any of her friends.

Mercado spent years trying to locate Godden/Perry. He returned to Palm Desert and tried to find the gas station attendant Godden/Perry spoke with but was unsuccessful.

In 2010, Mercado spoke to a woman named Natalie Smythe on the Facebook page for Palm Desert High School. She told him she remembered Godden/Perry briefly attending in 1989 before dropping out. The only other thing she recalled was that she thought Godden/Perry was living with a man locally referred to as Dragon Bill. He was a local marijuana dealer.

Detectives were unable to locate Smythe.

Dragon Bill was identified as William Komodo. He died of a heroin overdose in 2003.

On August 1st 2001, around 6pm, Claudia Brockham and Moya Nunez returned from work to their Falkirk Way Orlando home. Brockham's partner, Sarah Montez was gone. Her toddler son, Jaime Mercado, was alone in the house and suffering from severe heat stress. The air conditioning was off and all the windows were closed. Her purse was on the counter. It was an hour on foot to the nearest shopping mall or supermarket and that route required crossing a six lane freeway with no pedestrian access. She did not own a car and no money for a cab.

Shortly after the women’s return, Jaime collapsed. Emergency services were called and he was taken to hospital.

The police initially considered it  child abandonment/neglect matter but switched to a missing/endangered persons case after they  interviewed Brockham and Nunez.

Godden/Perry had moved in with Brockham and Nunez as a co-tenant shortly after she arrived in Orlando in December 1997. The details on her lease indicate she was 21 years old. She was pregnant at the time of her arrival. She told them that she was from Mesquite in Texas and had grown up in foster care.

Shortly before Jaime's birth, Brockham and Montez became a couple.

On separate occasions, she told Brockham and Nunez that she was fleeing an abusive relationship with Jaime’s father and moved to Orlando to be closer to her grandmother who lived in Winter Park. She stated that she left Jaime's father before he knew she was pregnant and was afraid that he would attempt to kidnap the child if he knew he existed.

Brockham and Nunez had both met her grandmother, Griselda Luiz,on multiple occasions but had never had a conversation with her because Luiz only spoke Spanish.

The police interviewed Luiz. She stated she was not Montez's grandmother. Luiz met Montez for the first time in November 1997 after she answered a notice placed on a billboard at the local botanica seeking a babysitter.

She also stated the she did not believe Spanish was Montez's mother tongue. Montez spoke with a strong  American accent, in a stilted fashion and mispronounced common words.

Jaime was placed in a foster home, where he ultimately grew up.

Paternity testing later proved the James Mercado was not Jaime’s father.

On February 20th 2002, Nunez's naked body was found on the curb in front of the house on the corner of Falkirk Way and Girvan St. She had been beaten to death and sexually assaulted with a pipe wrench; the wrench was found still inserted in her body.

Nunez's boyfriend of three years, Donald Standish, was a significant player on the local methamphetamine scene and a long-standing member of The White Crows street gang.

As a result of this involvement with the gang, he was the subject of police surveillance at the time of her death. Hidden cameras had been placed in the Falkirk Way house in order to observe Standish's activities. They captured the murder taking place. The killer was Patrick Holyoak, a fellow member of the White Crows.

Nunez's death forced the rapid wrapping up of the surveillance and a number of somewhat premature arrests.

Ultimately, it was discovered Nunez had been killed, in part, as punishment for Standish having stolen meth from the White Crows.

Inevitably, Montez's disappearance was suspected of being connected to Nunez's death.

Individuals in custody were questioned about Montez.

The gang members, taken as a group, stated that Montez had made them uneasy and most had avoided her.

The chapter president and the man who ordered Nunez’s death, Bart Kent, stated her behaviour was so odd that he believed, for a time, that Montez was an undercover police officer. He hired a trusted private investigator to look into her identity.

The private investigator   witnessed her travel hundreds of kilometres to secretly commit a range of crimes from shoplifting to car theft. She did so using a car that she garaged a few blocks away in Sue Ann Street, of which, no one else in her household seemed to be aware. A number of these crimes were committed whilst she carried Jaime or pushed him in a pram.

He was unable to establish her identity previous to her arrival in Florida but concluded she was not law enforcement.

Kent was cooperative and helpful when re-interviewed, reaffirming the fact that The White Crows had no criminal involvement with Godden/Montez or her disappearance. He also voluntarily gave the contact details of the private investigator to the police. At the end of the interview, he added that despite decades in organised crime, that he had never met anyone who had conceal their identity in the waythat Godden/Montez had.

The private investigator turned over his files on the case to the police. His initial impression of Godden/Montez was that she had disassociative identity disorder. However, after he had surveilled her for a period, he concluded that she had been compartmentalising her life for so long that the behaviour was normalised for her.

On January 7th 2007, around 3pm, Jennifer Bolden-Hicks (Godden) left her Danville Virginia home to travel to her friend April Jones home in nearby Kentuck. She was returning a cocktail dress she had borrowed the previous month. It was intended to be a quick visit as she did not like to leave her husband to cope with the couple's one year old twins alone for long periods.

At 4.30pm, she texted that she was on her way home. When she had not returned by 5.30pm, Hicks texted her, then called when he got no reply.  Hicks called April Jones. She stated Godden/Bolden-Hicks left her home right after she texted him.

He became concerned his wife had been in an accident. He put the twins in the car and drove the route he knew Godden/Bolden-Hicks always took to and from Jones’ home.

Halfway to Jones’ house, he located Godden/Bolden-Hicks car on the side of the road. A back window was broken in. There was a small amount of blood on the ground next to the driver's side door. Hicks called the police.

In 2004, Hicks met Godden/Bolden-Hicks at the college graduation of his cousin Martha. Godden/Bolden-Hicks was also graduating that day, having completed a Bachelors degree in Accounting. They married after dating a year. The birth date on her marriage license suggested she was 25 years old.

Bolden-Hicks’said her family was originally from the Chicago region. Both her parents had drug problems and they moved around the country frequently to avoid debts to dealers. Her father overdosed when she was four. Her mother became increasingly affected by her addiction, ultimately dying of liver cancer when Godden/Bolden-Hicks was fifteen.

After her mother’s death, she spent the remainder of her teens in care in rural Virginia. Godden/Bolden-Hicks excelled in high school and won a scholarship.

She also told Hicks that she had an older sister, Latisha, who disappeared at age twelve after having been removed from her parents by CPS. Godden/Bolden-Hicks showed Hicks the missing person listing for Latisha on the Charley Project.

At the time of her disappearance, Godden/Bolden-Hicks was on maternity leave from BGF Industries, where she worked as an accountant.

The police canvassed  Godden/Bolden-Hicks friends and colleagues. All stated she was well liked, hard working and kind, seemed happy and settled in her life. No one could think of anyone with a grudge.

After learning this information, law enforcement then attempted to contact her biological family.

They were able to locate the aunt mentioned in Latisha's missing person report, Emma Bolden.

The call was met with disbelief from Ms Bolden. Latisha’s sister Jennifer currently lived with the aunt. She was sitting opposite Ms Bolden during the call. Law enforcement spoke to Jennifer, confirmed her identity and that she had been living at that address for years.

They also emailed a photograph of Godden/Bolden-Hicks to Emma Bolden; she did not recognise the person in the image.

February 2nd 2007, around 6pm, a young mother, Cara Miglin, left her Carver Drive, Danville  home to buy milk at George's Market, a two minute drive away. She never returned home.

Carver Drive is just two streets away from Camp Grove Place, where Godden/Bolden-Hicks lived.

Two days later, fire fighters were called to a car on fire on Eagle Hills Road. The fire fighters noticed the smell of decomposition. They discovered Miglin's naked body just inside the tree line in Evans Park. She had been sexually assaulted and strangled.

On the 13th of February 2007, around 7pm, passersby apprehended a man on Edgewood Drive Danville who was attempting to abduct Camille St Julian, a 25 year old college student. The offender was Rodney Hicks.

Hicks was eventually charged with the murder of Cara Miglin. Hicks' DNA was matched to the rape kit collected from Miglin’s body.

Hicks refused to answer questions about either Miglin's murder or St Julian's attempted abduction. He did, however, constantly and adamantly deny involvement in Godden/Bolden-Hicks' disappearance.

Prosecutors had planned to charge Hicks with his wife's murder. Whilst gathering evidence, it came to light that Godden/Bolden-Hicks was about to be charged with embezzling money from an employer she worked for in college. This increased the likelihood she had voluntarily gone missing. The prosecutor decided not to go forward with charging Bolden for the murder of his wife.

Hicks plead guilty to murder of Miglin and the attempted abduction of St Julian to avoid the death penalty. He is currently serving a term of life without the possibility of parole.

On October 16th 2017, an employee at a long-term frozen storage facility in Charles Town, West Virginia, found the body of Lashinta Godden. The company was coming out of a two month industrial dispute which had entirely shut down work at the facility. The body was found in a remote and seldom-visited building were temperature-sensitive and unstable chemicals are kept. Goddens naked body was compressed against

the back wall, behind a pallet of boxes. The storage unit was kept at below zero degrees and Godden’s body was fully frozen.

A forklift and the assistance of at least one other person would have been required to place Godden’s body in that position.

The FBI took over the case. The body was transported to Quantico and an autopsy performed. As predicted, Godden had died of stab wounds to the chest. Her throat had also been cut perimortem period. This injury had occurred after her clothing was removed because the blood stain pattern was inconsistent with a throat injury. She was not sexually assaulted. The autopsy revealed she was at least a decade older than she claimed. Her body bore signs of having done hard manual labour during her growing period. She had widespread and advanced osteoarthritis in her major joints. This would have caused her significant pain. No one in her life mentioned her showing any signs of disability.

Within a week of the autopsy, the case was reviewed by a panel of specialist investigators. It was concluded that the greatest likelihood of solving the case would exist if Godden could be definitively identified.

Godden's DNA was initially uploaded to NDIS and run. This was done with the expectation that it would find nothing and then be passed on for genetic genealogy. It was not the case. Godden’s DNA was an immediate, full match to a case in Knoxville,

Tennessee.

In early October 2001, a very dark skinned African American woman accompanied by two blonde children, a boy and a girl aged around three and five years, began begging in the area around the Handy Dandy market on South Haven Rd Knoxville. The woman told a number of the people she approached that they were her children. She also stated she was just passing through Knoxville. One witness said she told her that her boyfriend had dumped her on the edge of the road outside Knoxville after a car fight whilst travelling.

As days passed, the trio appeared increasingly dirty and observers noted that the girl was beginning to look unwell. Concern for the welfare of the children eventually drove a number of local residents to contact law enforcement.

Police eventually tracked the woman and the children back to an illegal encampment in the Ijam nature reserve. She initially stated her name was Karen McClain and the children were Billy and Clara. She repeated claims that she was the children's mother.

When her claims were challenged, she stated that her mother was white, the children had a white father and this happened all the time. The children seemed unafraid of her and showed normal and appropriate signs of attachment. The woman seemed linear, orientated and not mentally ill or drug affected.

The children remained silent during all interactions with law enforcement. They were examined by a child psychologist who concluded they were able to speak but were too afraid to do so.

The woman’s alleged identity was quickly disproved. On further questioning, the woman offered up a string of other names and places of origin; none proved to be valid.

All three were DNA tested. As expected, the children were not the woman’s biological offspring.

The DNA results for the children proved uninformative in terms of identifying them. They were taken into the care of CPS.

The woman was arraigned on charges of kidnapping and bail set at $100000.

After a week in custody, someone anonymously posted the entire bail for the woman in cash. She was required to remain in Knoxville and was housed in a halfway house. The night after she made bail, the woman walked out of her accommodation and never returned.

After three months, the children were identified as William and Clara Abel from Augusta, Georgia. They had been missing since May 26th 2001 with their stepfather Johnson Clark.

Clark was a self-employed classic car restorer. He planned to travel to Washington D. C. to pick up a vehicle that he was contracted to restore.

William and Clara’s grandmother  lives in Charlotte, North Carolina. It was arranged that the children would spend the summer with her that year. Their mother, Janice Abel, asked Clark to drop the children at their grandmother's home on the way north. Clark happily agreed. The last time that all three were seen was around 4am on May 26th when they left home in Clark’s lime green Cadillac, to travel north.

Clara and William remained traumatised for several years after being returned to their mother.

William never regained any memory of his experiences before the day they had gone into police custody.

Clara always maintained she recalled the events but said every time she attempted to talk about it, she would find herself unable to speak.

Around her thirteenth birthday, she was suddenly able to communicate the events and tell law enforcement what she remembered.

Clark had driven several hours after they left that morning, stopping twice so they could eat and take bathroom breaks.

The third stop was at a rest area, where he picked up an exceptionally tall, young white man. He was introduced to the children as Calvin. Clara stated that they clearly knew each other and that the meeting had been prearranged.

They drove for a while, stopped again and then Calvin took a turn driving.

Soon after they resumed their journey, Clark began asking Calvin why they were taking the route they were on. A verbal argument broke out. Calvin pulled over in a forested area. He produced a gun.

Clara grabbed William and they ran into the tree line. She heard gun shots behind them.

She forced William to hide. They were close enough to the road to hear when the car eventually drove off.

The children waited for several hours then went back to the road. Clara said the only thing she could think to do was walk back in the direction they came from.

After an hour or so, they came to an empty picnic area. They first encountered the black woman there, when she emerged out of the trees at the back of the picnic area. She asked a few questions but Clara said she had only been able to say their names and that there had been a man with a gun.

The woman had taken the children to a tent hidden in the trees. She shared what food she had.

The next day, she began hitch-hiking north with the children till they got to Knoxville. Each town they stopped at, they had camped then begged till they had money to eat.

She was very clear the woman did not hurt them in any way and treated them with kindness. She also said that the woman had asked Clara questions every single day in an attempt to determine their identity and where they lived but that Clara herself had been unable to answer.

Law enforcement was able to determined that Clark had driven West rather than North based on landmarks Clara gave them.

Calvin was identified as a male prostitute named Kelvin Hobbs. Hobbs died in Atlanta Georgia in 2003 of a heroin overdose.

Renewed media coverage arose from Godden being identified as the woman in the Abel-Clark missing persons case.

A woman name Juanita Thrasher living in La Fayette Alabama recognised Hobbs from a photograph on a news segment.

At the time of Clark and the children’s disappearance, Thrasher’s husband Dougie ran an illegal junkyard from their farm. He was well known in the local criminal community to take stolen vehicles that would be otherwise difficult to sell on. He avoided detection by hiding the wrecks in a section of forest at the back of the property.

Ms Thrasher remembered Calvin coming to the property one morning and giving–rather than selling–her husband a well kept, vivid green Cadillac. He had planned to switch the plates and resell it immediately. An hour or so later, he went out to detail the vehicle but did not come back till after dark. When he did, he was pale. He said that the car was wrong and that he had hidden it up the back of the property. He told Ms Thrasher to stay away from it; she had complied with his request.

Dougy died of a heart attack on November 1st 2003.

Ms Thrasher led the police to Clark’s vehicle. His remains were in the trunk. He died of a single gunshot wound to the forehead.

The Godden case languished for over a year. In late October 2019, there was a familial DNA match from the NDIS system.

On November 15 1979, William Morton shot his wife Marjorie in the head. The incident occurred on the front lawn of his home at number 5, 117th Avenue, Lake Stevens, Washington State. It was witnessed by more than fifteen people, including a group attending a house auction directly across the road. Morton made no attempt to disguise his crime, surrendered to the police and freely admitted to what he had done. He told the police that he killed Marjorie because she just informed him that she planned to return to her ex-husband with his two step children, Paolo Powell, six years old, Tina Powell, 10 years, and Albert Morton who was 18 months old and his biological child with Marjorie.

When police entered the house after the shooting, they found Albert asleep in his crib upstairs.

They were unable to locate the two older children.

Morton refused to reveal where they were or whether they were still alive. He would only suggest they were somewhere no one would ever find them or even think to look.

Searches of the area were conducted in the days following the murder but no trace of the children was found.

Information emerged that the children had not gone to school that week. No one had seen them after they left school the previous week. Law enforcement became convinced whatever happened to the children happened days before the police recognised they were missing.

Morton plead guilty to Marjorie's murder life in prison without the possibility of parole.

He was diagnosed with an aggressive form of leukaemia a year into his sentence. He refused treatment and died on October 15th 1983.

After his death, a former cell mate came forward and stated that Morton often suggested that the children were alive, living with someone he had grown up with.

Around five years after Paolo and Tina disappeared, a school friend travelling to to visit Joshua Tree had claimed to have seen Tina working on a farm north of Palm Desert.

In light of the cell mate's revelations, Morton's personal history was interrogated.  Morton was a foster child, who had lived in more than 30 homes on the west coast of the United States during his childhood. At least half the records were lost over time. Law enforcement were unable to establish any link with the area.

In September 2019, Marjorie's ex-husband, at the behest of The Doe Network submitted his DNA to NDIS.

It matched to Godden within a short time. Specialist photographic comparison techniques were used to confirm identity. It was somewhat unnecessary as there is, in adulthood, a startling resemblance between Marjorie and Godden.

Powell/Godden’s remains were released to her father. She was interred at Machias Community Cemetery in a large ceremony. Albert Morton and James Mercado were in attendance.

No further leads in the Powell/Godden case have emerged.