Here's a interesting story for you, just in time for Halloween. It concerns vampires, the Russian mafia and a vanished freelance reporter.
Her name was Susan Walsh, and she hasn't been seen since 1996. Susan disappeared after filing a story with the Village Voice - a story they would never print. It concerned "vampire" clubs in NYC, a phenomena that mixed the goth and S&M communities, and it seems Walsh's story was a little too sympathetic for her editors' taste. Friends say she wrote as if she believed some club-goers' stories of immortality, that she was even romantically linked to one man who claimed to be the real deal.
Despite the obvious appeal of the "Kidnapped by vampires" theory, role-playing club kids were not the biggest threat in Walsh's life. There was also the Russian mafia, who Walsh no doubt angered with her reporting on the sex industry. Walsh put herself through college by stripping, and she used her club connections to write an expose on alleged sex trafficking by the Russian mob. The piece ran in the Voice in the early 90's, and Walsh told friends she feared backlash for it.
Still, the biggest threat to Walsh may not have been external. She was attending AA at the time of her disappearance, and admitted to abusing drugs in college. She was on anti-depressants, including the heavy-hitter Xanax. Her marriage seemed to be deteriorating, and her journalism career seemed stalled.
Yet she was a good mother by all accounts, an avid writer and reporter, and a beloved daughter. And she left a son, who should know where his mother went.
I've known Susan's story for a while, but here are the links that refreshed my memory.
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