Kristen Modafferi

February 26, 2026·45 min·4 clips

Kristen Modafferi landed in California on her 18th birthday, but vanished just 23 days later.

Kristen had a plan. After her first year at North Carolina State University, the 17-year-old went to California for a class and a taste of being on her own. Then she vanished. The host keeps the focus on how investigators treated it: not as a teenager walking away, but as something that did not look voluntary. Hospitals had nothing. Jails had nothing. Interviews with Kristen's roommates reportedly sounded consistent and forthcoming enough that investigators cleared them. The timeline still refused to sit still. Roommates said Kristen had gone to a beach party at Land's End about 48 hours earlier, while coworkers remembered her asking for directions there on the day she was last seen. That is the snag. If she had already been to Land's End, the later request for directions is harder to explain. The party never firmed up. Investigators could not prove Kristen attended it, and they could not prove the party happened at all. Then the bloodhounds made the case feel even stranger. A private investigator brought in dogs that tracked Kristen's scent from Crocker Galleria, west on Geary Street, and into the Tenderloin neighborhood. The trail kept going. The host explains why that supported the idea that Kristen may have taken the 38 Geary Muni bus toward Land's End. Near the Sutro Baths, north of Ocean Beach, the dogs picked up her scent again and lost it near the water and a tunnel. They tried twice. Both runs reportedly ended in the same place, which leaves a picture that is specific, beautiful, and hard to shake.

As heard by us

A California disappearance turns on conflicting last movements and a bloodhound trail that fades near the water.

Kristen Modaferri's summer in California starts as a deliberate step into adult life, then narrows into a disappearance defined by a timeline that will not settle.

Read the full review in PlayNext →

Why you'd press play

You get a California summer meant for independence, tangled last-movement accounts, and a bloodhound trail that fades near the water.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

Listen to the show on

Apple Podcasts Spotify

Play clips from this episode More from Voices for Justice