Unsolved Mysteries Rewind · Unsolved Mysteries Rewind

The Strange and Mysterious Death of Joyce Chiang

September 12, 2023·55 min·3 clips

Joyce told friends she was stopping at Starbucks for tea, then planned to walk four blocks home.

Mark opens with Amy and frames the case as one of the show’s genuinely unsolved stories. They note that the episode comes from season 11, episode 11, with a Dennis Farina version also floating around under the title “The Other Intern.” That title irritates them. They think it undersells Joyce and leaves the case sitting in Chandra Levy’s shadow. Both women disappeared and were found murdered two years apart, which becomes a sharp and unavoidable comparison in the discussion. Mark says he found an old America’s Most Wanted piece about Joyce from when she first went missing, and that national coverage becomes part of the conversation. The hosts keep returning to how sad the case is and how young Joyce was. When Roger, Joyce’s brother, enters the discussion, they focus on the call he made to his mother after learning the news. The moment lands hard for them, and they read Roger as genuine and matter-of-fact. They say they do not get the suspicious feeling they sometimes get with people connected to murder cases. The episode also detours into a sidebar about another person they have tried to contact on Facebook for a possible interview. They gripe about people who say they are open to talking and then never follow through. The case discussion keeps circling back to how unresolved and underexplained everything still feels. By the close, Mark and Amy are still mixing empathy, irritation, and skepticism, and the episode ends with the show’s usual wrap and a teaser for a separate project.

As heard by us

A loose, plainspoken revisit that argues Joyce Chang's case deserved more care.

The episode centers Joyce Chang's disappearance and murder under the blunt title "The Other Intern," and it makes a convincing case that the framing never did her justice.

Read the full review in PlayNext →

Why you'd press play

A talky revisit of The Other Intern that argues Joyce Chang deserved better than the title gave her.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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