Foul Play: A Historical True Crime Podcast · Shane L. Waters, Wendy Cee, Gemma Hoskins

Taipei: Discovering The Chia Children Remains

March 10, 2025·21 min·1 clip

Nine months after two children vanished, a highway worker found them in a ditch.

The episode returns to the story of Charles and Jennifer Cha in episode three, “Remains.” It starts with the site and works backward through the geography of the crime. Alan took Shane there for a look around, and the trip into Plumas County becomes part of the story. So does the drive from Reno. The episode makes clear that distance was not neutral here. It was part of the concealment. Along the route there was a police checkpoint, which sharpens the risk for someone hiding two children in a vehicle. At the site, Alan stops for a quick mic and battery check before they get out to explore. The land has changed since then. Some trees have been cut down. A fire road now runs through the area. The episode points out that a vehicle could once have pulled closer without being seen. It marks the opening in the trees, the slope down to where the bodies were found, and the roughly 90 feet between the pull-in and the site. A cadaver dog gives a slight indication in one area, and the search starts there. Digging is described as easy, and that ease is chilling. The episode does not treat the site as scenery. It treats it as evidence. The terrain becomes a record of secrecy, haste, and error. Time has altered the view, but not the meaning. The land still carries the shape of what was done there.

As heard by us

A careful site visit makes the physical reality of the case easy to picture.

The episode tracks the route to the site where the Cha children were buried, and that choice gives the case real weight. It moves through Plumas County and the drive from Reno, where a police checkpoint adds to the sense of risk, then settles on the landscape itself: a fire…

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If you want the burial-site search laid out step by step, start here.

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