S6E20 She Goes by Jane: Giving Missing and Unidentified Women Their Names Back

What happens when a person disappears—and the world slowly stops looking?

In this episode of Stop the Killing, Katherine Schweit is joined by Aimee Baker and Vanessa Ciccarelli, hosts of the podcast She Goes by Jane, which centres the lives and stories of missing and unidentified women.

Aimee explains how her work began after she learned about an unidentified teenage girl found beside Interstate 10 outside Phoenix. Unable to comprehend how someone so young could remain nameless, she began researching missing-person cases and transforming that grief into poetry. Those poems eventually became her collection, Doe.

After reading the book, filmmaker and photographer Vanessa approached Aimee about creating a documentary. The result was She, narrated by Kate Mulgrew and featuring poetry read by Coco Jones and Raven Goodwin. Their work then grew into the podcast She Goes by Jane, allowing them to investigate more cases and spend meaningful time exploring who these women were—not simply what happened to them.

Katherine, Aimee and Vanessa discuss the staggering scale of the missing and unidentified persons crisis, why some cases receive far more attention than others, and how race, gender, sexuality, poverty and public perception can influence who is considered worthy of media coverage.

They also explore the importance of placing victims—not offenders—at the centre of true-crime storytelling. Aimee shares a powerful exercise she uses with college students: asking them to list the names of every serial killer they can remember, followed by the names of their victims. The difference is immediate and uncomfortable.

This conversation is ultimately about restoring humanity. Behind every statistic is a person with relationships, memories, dreams and people who may still be searching for them.

• How one unidentified teenager inspired Aimee’s poetry collection Doe

• The making of the documentary She

• Why Aimee and Vanessa created the She Goes by Jane podcast

• How quickly someone can disappear from their everyday life

• The overwhelming number of missing and unidentified people

• Why certain cases receive widespread coverage while others are ignored

• The effect of race, gender, sexuality and social status on media attention

• Remembering victims’ names rather than glorifying perpetrators

• The responsibility of true-crime creators to preserve victims’ humanity

• How individual stories reveal the scale of a much larger crisis

Listen to She Goes by Jane on all major podcast platforms.

To find the documentary She, search for Aimee Baker and the film title on Apple, Amazon and other streaming platforms.

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