By: Who Killed Missy Witt?
Let me start off by going over some important facts:
1. This team/staff is no stranger to mysterious messages, emails and phone calls. In fact, we have accepted that those things just go with the territory when you are working on a story about the abduction and murder of a young woman.
2. Our team takes every message, call and email very seriously - and we go out of our way to address everyone who cares enough about this case to reach out to us.
3. We do sometimes meet with people in person - but we are incredibly cautious.
4. We turn over all tips to law enforcement. We are not law enforcement and we never try to operate in that capacity.
5. We have never before openly written about any of the strange encounters that we have experienced as we work on this project. But what happened tonight is so unusual, so mysterious and so bizarre, we decided we had to share it.
With all of that said, we are going to do something unprecedented and share our experience with the Mysterious Mr. Riley.
He first contacted us in 2018. He claimed to have information in the Witt case and he wanted to meet with someone from our team in person. We agreed to meet and then... Mr. Riley went "radio silent." After several attempts to reach out to him, we gave up. He never responded... until Sunday.
Out of the blue, Mr. Riley once again claimed to have information in the Witt case... information that included tangible items that could be very important: photos and audio.
After much back and forth, Mr. Riley agreed to meet us in the parking lot of Central Mall at precisely 6:30pm.
He was insistent on meeting in person and our team, believing Mr. Riley truly needed to talk, agreed to drive the hour or so necessary to speak to him.
Mr. Riley went as far as to provide us with a photograph of the truck he said he would be driving. He even went as far as to make our team promise that we would keep his identity a secret.
Our team, cautiously made the arrangements to be in the mall parking lot, and we arrived, half an hour early - ready and willing to speak to Mr. Riley.
By 6:38pm we began to wonder if Mr. Riley was really going to show up. The vehicle he claimed to be driving was going to be easily recognized and it was nowhere in site.
We sent him a message and he responded with: "On my way, I had to get a babysitter."
Our team watched from different areas of the parking lot (we were in different vehicles throughout the parking lot) and there was still no Mr. Riley.
There was, however, a Range Rover, that parked in a suspicious area and watched "us" -- us being the team members that were in the vehicle that we had described to Mr. Riley so he could find us easily.
He got spooked, for whatever reason. Or didn't like the fact there were more than two people in his target vehicle.
Either way, as the Range Rover drove away quickly, we realized that Mr. Riley had no intention of speaking to us... and yet, he messaged us a few minutes later to inform us that the information we were seeking was hidden behind "the dumpster"... and it also became clear that it had been Mr. Riley in that Range Rover... watching us.
We responded and asked "Which Dumpster?"
No reply.
We sent a series of other message with no reply. Just like that, Mr. Riley had once again gone "radio silent".
Our team members began canvassing the mall parking lot and checking out every dumpster.
There was, of course, nothing to be found.
Why, Mr. Riley?
Why would you ask our team to drive over an hour to meet you, in the rain, on a Holiday Weekend, only to play a game of cat and mouse?
After all, you came to us with this information.
You requested the meeting.
And then you proceeded to tell us a series of lies and play games with an entire team of people who have committed their time, talent and resources to this project.
Why?
Who are you, Mr. Riley?
And what did you gain from Sunday?
What exactly are you up to, Mr. Riley?
PS. We got the tag number from the Range Rover and we are turning it over to authorities.
