Hey, true advocates.

This is part two of Todd Harriman's story, so if you haven't listened to part one, I highly suggest starting their first.

We left off with Todd in her family starting their new life together in America.

I'm Kristin Sevie from murder, she told, and this is true consequences.

Tahoe's mountains shrank in the rear view mirror as Clint drove his family east.

Refreshed and ready to start their new life, they moved near Clint's mother in Cape Elizabeth, Maine, just south of Portland.

Their home was spacious, with panoramic views of the bay.

Just steps from their front door was Trundy Point, a small peninsula where they could watch waves crash against the bluffs and cast lines into the water.

It was perfect for tot fishing, reminded her of home.

Clint married once more, this time with an American marriage certificate.

Minn also took on the Hareman name.

He'd never gotten a chance to know his biological father, who had died when he was young, and Clint embraced him as his own in nineteen seventy seven.

Two years later, Todt and Clint welcomed another son.

They named him Chinsea.

Most Vietnamese names, they have a meaning.

A lot of the times.

They're designed to be a reflection on your character or a reflection on who your parents would like you to become.

And there are some names, especially women's names, are just evocative of like something in nature.

I love flower is very common.

But my name and my dad and my mom had just come back from the world or and my dad wanted me to have a name that reflected something from their time together.

So yeah, he went home after I was born, and he looked up in a Vietnamese American dictionary something along the lines of a warrior or soldier, and that's how he came up with my name.

But there's there's no there's no one else really who's received the name.

So when I go to Vietnam now and I tell them what my name is, you know, they're they're either kind of like, Okay, that's cool, or like, well, you know that that's a pretty that's a pretty intense name.

Chinzi is sort I think is a reflective of a Vietnamese force that existed at a time that was just known for being brave.

I mean, it's a pretty strong name, right, So I think it's kind of like you met someone and they said, you know, hey, my name's Rambo, you'd be like, oh, okay.

I mean, you know, you have a lot to live up to round a name like that.

The kids who were enrolled in school and Tot stayed busy as a mother and a homemaker.

She was active in her children's school in extracurricular activities, and welcomed their friends into her home.

Two homs shared a memory of Tot's hospitality.

I remember coming home from high school dances at eleven at night with friends, and my mom would get up and cook us a full meal.

She'd do a stirfry and rice and some fruit, the whole nine yards.

Naturally, the house became the go to hangout spot.

Many of her children's friends even called her mom.

Well, I put it this way, my mom was really very generous with her time, really generous with her energy, and she loved getting to know people.

She loved making them feel at home.

She used to do a lot of cooking for the neighborhood, and she'd invite people over a lot that weren't Vietnamese, just people in our neighborhood and we'd have these things called kitchen dinners, and we'd sit around a little table that we had in the kitchen, and we'd all my mom would make a great meal.

She was always known for her cooking and how great her cooking was, and she fed a lot of people and it always felt lovely and everyone really appreciated all of her time and all of her thoughtfulness there, you know, of her friends, and from her early life in Vietnam, the two things that she became really skilled at were cooking and sewing.

You know, I also remember my mom giving people a lot of joy making dresses for them, especially wedding dresses.

She would just get a client that would come over with just a picture of a wedding dress that you know, a lot of times maybe was too extravagantly priced, and my mom would, you know, sort of diligently cut all the cloth and make all the patterns and build a custom wedding dress with all the brocading.

And you know, I would see my mom sitting there late at night just beating, you know, one beat at a time onto these wedding dresses.

And I think that gave her a lot of joy, and I think she did it really food was a central part of life.

She taught cooking classes for fellow maners, and she even opened a Vietnamese restaurant in Portland named after her daughter, to Hum, where she was known to Greek customers with big smiles and friendly conversation.

Taught embraced American life and later said that she considered herself quote more American than Vietnamese, but she also honored her roots.

Although she wasn't able to raise her children in Vietnam, she made sure that their lives were infused with its culture.

My mom was sort of funny, like she was sort of like a cultural ambassador in a way.

I mean, I don't want to like overblow it, but yeah, you know she kind of was.

You know, it didn't matter how many people came.

She you know, she would throw big parties around the Vietnamese New Year, and our house would just be filled.

I mean it was like a nightclub.

You know, you couldn't even sit down, there's so many people there, food for one hundred people.

I remember her praying during the times of the ceremony during the Vietnamese New Year.

You know, she was bringing all of those experiences over to Maine, and everyone you know, would watch with a lot of respect, and you know, our house to get really quiet, while my mom would pray even during those big parties.

She just had a way of bringing people together and experiencing something new.

The Vietnamese population in Portland was very small when taught in her family arrived.

Even today, Maine as a whole is ninety four percent white.

She wasn't just a minority.

She was one of the very few Vietnamese families in Greater Portland when she arrived in nineteen seventy five.

You know, my mom with a handful of Vietnamese refugee families, you know, sort of started the Vitnase community in the Greater Portland area.

You know, the Vidnamese community that's there now, you know, when I went back there a few years ago, has really grown.

You know.

I think it's a testament to people that stayed and tried to make it grow.

And I mean it's really a testament to the people name too, for letting them flourished there.

And I think she felt really lucky in a sense that all the good things that happened to her in her life in the US happened.

I think she felt an indebtedness to the people of Maine.

Tot volunteered with a refugee resettlement service, helping immigrants adjust to American life.

Todd even opened her own home to newly arrived refugees, introducing them to American pastimes.

She would sometimes recruit Chinse to show them how to play basketball or baseball.

At Maine Medical Center, she served as an interpreter for Vietnamese patients.

Though her English wasn't perfect, she'd sometimes mispronounce and misspell words.

Her expressive nature allowed her to communicate while teasing herself about language mistakes became a trademark of her humor.

She also really liked dressing up and becoming another person and being theatrical.

She loved costumes and being on stage.

She actually knew how to sing some Vietnamese plays and Vietnamese operas.

She did that when we were really young, when we were first in the US, as part of the annual Lunar New Year festivals.

In photos from this vibrant period in Todd's life, you can see her standing proudly with her family, flashing smiles that were kind and welcoming, or, as Chinzee said, like a ray of sunshine that overcame a world of darkness.

For fourteen years, they lived together in the house on Trundy Point.

The family's life in Maine was idyllic until the summer of nineteen ninety two, when Clint, at age seventy two, lost his battle with cancer.

He'd been through a lot, right, I mean, two three wars.

You know, he lived a long, full life, and I think all the stress of those wars and smoking, and you know, they just caught up to him.

You know, we found out that he had cancer, and very quickly he got quite and I think he died maybe a little over a year and a half after his initiative diagnosis.

And that was obviously, you know, heard on my mom heard on all.

The following summer, the family buoyed their spirits by taking a trip to Vietnam.

It was their first time back since the nineteen seventy five evacuation, and Tot was thrilled to introduce her children to the family.

They'd grown substantially since they left to Ham had graduated from the University of Maine, and Men was working as an engineer with the Merchant Marines.

Chin Z was still in high school, but would soon move to California to attend Stanford University.

Tot's roots were in Vietnam, but the United States had become home for both her and her children.

We spent the month out there, mostly in the village.

I mean the village would shut down, you know, we'd come into certain parts of the village, like everybody would want to stop and come to see us.

If we were driving through the countryside, workers that were were working in rice fields would see us coming from a distance and literally stop what they were doing to watch us pass.

We were true foreigners, and they wanted to know just like everything about us.

And they didn't know a little the things that you hear about, you know, Mickey Mouse and Rambo, for example, Like they knew some of those things.

And my mom went back to go try and give her family a better life.

She was helping my uncle and my aunts by rice patties and by generator businesses and things like that to help give them a business before she left and went back home.

In nineteen ninety six, after Chinsey headed off to college, Todd was alone in her house on the Bay.

She was in her early fifties and wanted to find another companion.

She found John Darby and moved to Milton, a small town in the Panhandle region of Florida, to be with him.

The muggy heat near the coast was reminiscent of Vietnam's tropical climate, a welcome change after eighteen frigid New England winters.

She decided that she'd have to start life anew and that's what brought her to Florida.

I think she wanted to start getting closer to her Vietnamese passions, and you know, just warm weather and fishing and growing mangoes, and she was really looking forward to that.

Her new home was smaller than the one in Maine, but had the same easy access to water.

It was just steps away from the Blackwater River in less than a minute's walk to a state park.

Seated on a park bench, Tot enjoyed the shade of magnolia trees as she watched the river pulled ducks, fish, and kayaks slowly south.

In two thousand and one, after five years in Florida, Tot's partner passed away and she moved again, this time to be closer to her children.

That summer, she drove to Texas to visit them.

Man and Tuhum lived close to one another in the suburbs of Houston.

Man was in League City, where he worked training astronauts at the United Space Alliance.

Too.

Hum, who married a merchant Marine in nineteen ninety five, was a homemaker living in the neighboring town of Clear Lake.

The siblings were growing roots in Texas and they wanted Tot nearby to share in their lives.

But Tot wasn't sold on the Houston area.

She wanted to live somewhere with better views of the water and more access to the beach.

She was also looking for a place where she could buy property that she could rent out as a landlord.

She had originally argued for Brownsville, the southernmost city in Texas, right on the Mexican border.

Bet her children told her it was further from them than her home in Florida.

Corpus Christie was as far as we'd let her go, said Chinsey.

It was less than a four hour drive from men and two Hum and seemed like the perfect fit for Tot.

The coastal city is surrounded by islands in bays and is a popular vacation spot that attracts millions of visitors each year.

Between permanent redis residences and vacation homes.

There were an abundance of real estate options available.

Tot made an appointment with a realtor in Corpus Christie for Friday, the thirteenth of July.

Her children helped her prepare for her trip.

Touham mapped out her route down the coast.

Rather than take the busy Interstate, she'd head south on Highway thirty five, a two lane country road, though went through a series of small towns, It would take Tot all the way to Corpus if she stayed on track.

She planned to leave early in the morning in order to avoid traffic.

The evening before she departed, Min checked Tot's car to make sure it was in good shape.

She drove a maroon nineteen ninety five Linking Continental, a four door sedan.

Her Florida license plate red TOTSI.

The gas tank was three fourths full, enough to get her to her destination without stopping.

Tot planned to stay with some friends overnight in Corpus Christie and would be meeting with the reeltor the next day.

On the morning of Thursday, July twelfth, Tot woke early.

Min was still sleeping when she departed between five and five thirty am, but he briefly woke when she kissed him goodbye.

At eight thirty am, a friend called Tot and the phone rang four times before going to voicemail.

It would be the first of many attempts to reach her.

Based on the time that she left Min's house, she should have gotten to Corpus between nine and nine thirty, but at ten thirty am the friend called again, and this time it went straight to voicemail, indicating that her phone was off.

That evening, after not hearing from his mother all day, Min called the friends that she was supposed to be staying with.

When he learned that she'd never arrived, he immediately became worried.

The next day, Tot missed her appointment with the realtor, and nobody heard from her through that weekend, though In went to the League City Police on Thursday to report her missing.

The date on Tot's official missing person report was Monday, July sixteenth, four days after she was the last seen.

They really didn't allow us to file a missing person claim, you know, until maybe seventy two hours after we last saw her, and that's a long time, and we got a lot of kind of civil liberties thrown at us.

You know.

Oh, well, you know she's she's a grown lady.

She can do what she wants like, you know, no, like why would she you know, she wouldn't do this is out of character for her.

Well, you know, give it some time, and those are the most crucial times.

And I don't understand why law enforcement feels compelled to have a group of people wait long, especially for their loved ones.

While these initial days of investigation and panic were unfolding, Chinsey was oblivious to the truth.

Having the trip of a lifetime out west, a two hundred mile rafting trip through the Grand Canyon on the Colorado River.

I was in the bottom of the Grand Canyon in this old, two million year old rock, and I just, I don't know.

I just started thinking about my mom a lot that day and that night, and it was just beautiful there, and I was laying there on the rock and thinking about my mom, and I you know, kind of drifted off to sleep.

It was sort of half asleep, and it felt like something bit my back.

You know, they're telling us to be on the lookout for scorpions, so I thought, you know that I'd been bitten by a scorpion.

The image of my mom got completely squelched out, and it felt like something was biting my spine.

You know, had a friend with me.

His name was Rob.

I said, Bob, you know, did something bite my back?

And you know, he looked up and down my back with a slash light.

Nothing, And so I just sort of went back to bed that night, not really thinking much about it.

So I came out and the guide director said, hey, you know, you need to go make a phone call.

Something's happened with your family.

And I gave a call to my sister, and my cousin picked up the phone and said, you have to come home right away because your mom is missing.

And I remember just saying no, and you know, putting me on the phone, and they bought me a plane ticket.

Tensey quickly made it to Texas and was confronted with a strange new world without his mom.

And I walked into the offices of Texas Ecuasearch and I remember seeing flyers, pictures of my mom, pictures of the car, and just thinking this is surreal.

It wasn't until the following Thursday, July nineteenth, that Todt's description was shared publicly in the newspaper It read.

Harriman is described as being of Asian ancestry, standing four feet eleven inches tall and weighing one hundred pounds.

She has light brown eyes and wears gold framed eyeglasses.

She has black hair streaked with gray, and wears seven gold bracelets on her right arm.

The report also included a description of Tot's car and urged anyone with information to contact the League City Police Department.

The weekend of July twenty first and twenty second, over a week after Tot's disappearance, volunteers retraced her route down the seventy five miles of highway between League City and Bay City, as well as Port Lavaca and Palacius, areas closer to Tot's planned destination in Corpus Christi.

The search was organized by Texas Equisearch, an equestrian search and rescue group founded in response to another tragic disappearance out of Leak City.

In nineteen eighty four, a sixteen year old girl named Laura Miller vanished after using a payphone at a convenience store.

Seventeen months later, two children biking in fields outside the city came across the remains of another woman.

When authorities came and searched the area, Laura Miller's body was discovered.

Had the first accidental discovery not been made, Laura's body may never have been found.

It was clear to her father Tim that police efforts alone could never cover the state's vast open spaces when searching for missing persons.

He started equisearch as a way to honor his daughter's memory and help other families find answers to their loved one's disappearance.

While no official connections have been made by authorities, League City is home to an area known as the Texas Killing Fields.

Since the nineteen seventies, several women's bodies have been found in and around a twenty five acre patch of land, while thirty additional bodies matching similar descriptions have been found throughout the wider region of southeast Texas.

It is evident that foul play was a factor in the majority of these cases, leading many to believe that several serial killers could be behind the unsolved murders.

Although some believe that Tot has a connection to the Killing Field, she would be an outlier.

All of the other victims were women between the ages of twelve and thirty five, but Tot was fifty seven.

With Tim Miller leading them, EQUA search volunteers spent the weekend scouring the fields outside of Lake City under the blazing Texas sun, hoping to find some trace of Tot or her car.

They searched for miles on those routes, every body of water that they could think of.

They tried to plumb every possible route they drove, looking for god rails or something that looked like a car had gone off the road.

They flew multiple versions of the route using State police airplanes.

We would put horses on trailers and search for miles and miles along different routes where we thought maybe there was a chance she could have gone off the road.

On July twenty fourth, about two weeks after Tot's disappearance, League City Police detective Richard Renaisson told reporters that they had gotten several tips of sightings of the vehicle, including claims that it had been driven erradically on I forty five, the large highway taught planned to avoid.

One woman claimed to have seen a man driving Tot's maroon Sedan three days after she disappeared.

In her account, he was alone.

A composite sketch depicting a slim black man in his early twenties was released following her report.

The amount of detail she was able to recall is surprising, considering the fact that she only caught a brief glimpse of him while driving on a major highway and a week had elapsed before she reported the sighting.

Another caller said the car was parked at a grocery store ten minutes away from League City in Dickinson, and fortunately, since the reports came in over a week after the sightings, there was little that officials could do.

Where do we go look, questioned a lieutenant with the Sheriff's department.

Following the July twenty fourth updates, more reported sightings came in to Tot's family and the police.

A lot of leads turned out to not be true, said Detective Renaissance.

We had hundreds of sightings, but none we could substantiate.

Two weeks passed and Tot's children were losing faith in the ability of the police to locate their mother.

They hired a private investigator, and Chinzea, who was twenty four uprooted his life, moving from California to Texas.

In late July, he launched a website, Fine taught dot org to expand the case's reach.

The site contained photos of Todd, details of the case, and contact information.

He asked readers to reach out to major news outlets and TV stations to spread the word about her disappearance.

It is clear from Chinsey's words that he believed exposure was the best way to move the case.

He's forward.

The bottom of his first post read, please help me find her.

Contact me and tell me your thoughts or download flyers because we really have no idea where she is.

Annie assistance could help take them to your local hangouts and post them.

This is what the internet is for, isn't it.

It gets people from everywhere involved.

Chinsey also used the site to tell the story of his mother's life.

He posted pictures of Tot with her family, including one of her standing next to him at his graduation from Stanford the previous summer.

Though she is an entire head shorter than her son, Tot stands tall in the photo, beaming with pride at Chinsea's accomplishments.

He wrote, Hello everyone, this is my mother's sight.

I've tried to put into it everything that I could find.

This is my dedication to her memory and all for which she stood.

I don't know where she is right now, and I miss her.

She was an incredible woman, beyond words at times, whose life spoke for the good we all hope for, but sometimes let's slip away.

As July turned into August, hopes of finding taught dimmed.

Flyers with pictures of her car were fact to police stations all along the coast, though Chinsey didn't feel like they were doing much to help.

I personally called up many precincts across Houston and up and down the coast, Galveston, Victoria, all along the way, and I asked them each individually whether they knew of my mom's case, and in many cases they said no.

And so it really became a bit of a not a bit of It became a personal crusade to just get my mom's image, get her case in front of people.

And I've spent a year of my life just doing that pretty much NonStop.

Jinsey turned twenty five in early August.

It was the first birthday in his life where he hadn't heard from his mother.

He wrote, if I knew how my mom disappeared, I could accept that, but I don't.

Instead, I search every day to find clues that will bring her back to me.

I live now with only an imagination that runs wild with ideas, still blind to the truth.

On August eleventh, a local newspaper confirmed that police had gone through Todd's phone records and credit card statements, which showed that she hadn't made any calls or purchases since her disappearance.

The lack of activity, Detective Renaistan admitted, was very unusual.

The only thing they were able to confirm was that her phone must have lost power or been turned off between eight and ten thirty a m.

The day of her disappearance, as the first call that went through rang four times and the second call didn't ring at all.

He said, we've got a big pile of nothing.

Gen Z said in the same article, it's been really tough.

You want to get everything done as fast as you can, and you want a million people out looking for her, but it just doesn't happen that way.

It's the helplessness that's what's hardest for me.

You realize just how fractured the system is and how human it is, and how everyone just is mostly just reacting to whatever's in front of them and just prioritizing whatever's first at hand.

There's not this coordinated effort to find missing people.

On August fifteenth, a sergeant from the state Police summarized the efforts put forth so far, saying, we started at the residence and followed the route she planned to take all the way to Pelashus, which was the halfway point on her trip to Corpus.

We stopped at every ravine, every bar, ditch, every body of water, three or four places that she might have run off the road.

We weren't satisfied with what we found, so we used a plane on Friday.

We're going back in a helicopter.

There are a couple of areas of water we're going to check with a john boat.

The family is doing a lot of legwork.

We'll help the family and League City police in any way we can.

We are willing to do whatever it takes.

The Victoria Advocate, a local newspaper, printed two theories on the case in mid August.

The first was that Tot was involved in an automobile accident that resulted in her car becoming hidden for example, a deep section of one of the area's wetlands.

Houston's nickname is Bayou City, and bayous are basically swamps that contain murky, stagnant water, and since bayous typically have poorly defined shorelines, it could be hard to spot them from the road in a search.

In twenty eleven, Texas Equisearch released sonar pictures from three of the city's bayous, which revealed one hundred and twenty seven vehicles sunk in beneath the surface, possibly with bodies trapped inside.

In one interview, Houston police insisted that even if they attempted to extract the vehicles, they would fall apart.

Equisearch disagreed, insisting that it would be possible to remove them intact.

At the very least, they could recover license plates to connect the cars to missing persons cases.

Tim Miller, the founder, spoke to The Houston Chronicle in twenty eleven about police resistance to move forward with the sunken vehicles.

He said, I went to the detective and told him we've got a problem.

We've found all these cars, and he said, you need to shut up.

The city doesn't have the money and the public will go crazy about this.

The Houston police disagreed with Tim's version of events, but can see that there are still hundreds of submerged vehicles.

They remain unidentified in the Bayous today.

If Tot's is among them, it rests silently waiting to be recovered.

The second theory was that Tot was abducted and the car was stolen.

This was supported by the sightings of Tot's vehicle being driven erratically, as well as the family's instincts about her disappearance.

My brothers and I believe there was foul play involved, said too Hum.

In an interview with the Bankwor Daily News, Jinsey also expressed his inclination to believe that she was abducted, telling a reporter, we have thirty or more sightings of the car.

I bet my life that one of them is true, which lends more credence to the kidnapping theory.

Tot's children knew their mother had strong survival instincts, but in the same breath, Chinsey acknowledged his mother's outgoing tendencies, saying she'd easily strike up a conversation.

She always wanted to get a sense for where she was and what type of people lived there.

You know, my mom was fearless, just a fearless person.

Hey, you know she had this habit and some people thought it was just just crazy, but she you know, when she would go to other cities in the US, she would just look up the names of Vietnamese people in the fun book.

She would just find last names that were vietnamease, and she would just call them up out of the blue and say, hey, you know, are you from Vietnam.

I'm from Vietnam too, You know, you want to go hang out.

She's just a really good person.

But the theories were merely speculation, and Detective Renaissance expressed doubt that they would get any further finding.

Taught we don't have any promising leads at this point.

Numerous people claim to have seen the car.

We've searched ground, air, water, and basically found nothing.

Ginsey continued posting updates on the website daily, at times revealing his cynicism about human nature.

I can't believe that she's gone, that someone took her.

What is wrong with people?

Couldn't they see her beauty or her kindness?

Why is it that all they could see was the weakness of a small and frail woman.

On August ninth, an elderly man named Edgar Findersen when missing in Yokum, an inland city that was about an hour away from the closest city on Tot's route.

Texas Equisearch looked for Edgar and kept their eyes out for any clues that might lead them to Tot.

They searched around both Yokum and a city closer to Tot's route called Victoria, where police had received a tip that Tot may have been seen on main Street.

Tot's children went to Yokum and Victoria to distribute flyers.

On August seventeenth, a month after her disappearance, a helicopter from the state covered thirty five miles of small highway going through Yokum, and plains searched the area the following day.

It was still summer and the trees were thick with leaves obstructing their view from the sky.

By Janie, the trees lining the highways of southeast Texas had shed their leaves, and for a moment there was renewed hope that increased visibility might bring new discoveries.

The children had already settled their mother's finances.

They had removed her things from the Florida house in order to lease it and pay the mortgage.

After taking several months off to aid in the searches, men returned to work.

They were learning to live with their confusion and their grief.

In February two thousand and two, Chinsey wrote the world again, saying, for anyone out there who doesn't think that this is real, it is.

My mother has been missing for seven months now, and then he addressed his mom directly.

I'm sorry, Mom.

I'm so sorry that I haven't been able to find you.

I don't know where you are.

I hope that you're okay.

No one will help me, Mom.

I've tried calling newspers.

They don't respond.

I put your story in the newspaper again and again.

Only a few good people ever reply.

The police aren't doing anything for you anymore.

They think that you're dead, but I don't know what to believe.

Sometimes I think that I'm going to die on the inside.

I miss you so much.

I was going to take care of you, and I feel like I've let you down.

I'm sorry, Mom, Please God forgive me.

I have never felt so helpless in my life.

I love you, Mom, and I miss you very much.

We all do.

On July twelfth, two thousand and two, a year to the day after Tot's disappearance, mourners filed through the front doors of Spurwink Church in Cape Elizabeth, Maine, leave swaye in a faint breeze against the clear summer sky, the trees.

It's all only neighbours on a quiet country road.

As people walked inside the lonesome white chapel, Tot's face smiled at them from picture frames, bringing them warmth and companionship.

It had been one year since she kissed her son goodbye and departed on a journey from which she'd never return.

People listened from sunlit pews as men too hum and Chinsey took turns speaking about her life.

Ginsey considered the service to be a chance for people to pay tribute to his mom.

They had traveled back to Maine for the occasion, the place where Tat spent the most time, building a community and raising her family.

The service was attended by loved ones from every corner of Tot's life, friends who'd sat around her kitchen table, indulging in Vietnamese dishes and laughing at her jokes, fellow immigrants who she'd welcomed to America with her kindness and hospitality, and of course her family.

They placed a memorial marker for her in the cemetery behind the church, the same place their father, Clint, was buried.

Fresh cut grass cushioned their steps as they went to place flowers at the modest headstone.

Tot Tran Harriman was engraved in the flat gray granite marker that was buried level with the ground.

It was inscribed simply in all caps military style, with one line devoted to a single word missing.

Despite their pain, Tot's relentless optimism lived on in her children.

To Ham said, aside from the nightmare, I actually feel pretty blessed.

I have a family and friends surrounding me.

In a way, it's allowed me to realize what I do have and not to dwell so much on what I don't.

It's been twenty years since Tot's funeral.

I asked Chinsey what he thought happened to his mom.

Maybe worst case scenario, and I mean, probably what happened is and she drove into one of these towns in Texas, And like I said, she's very friendly, you know, very fearless and maybe even sort of charmed a little bit.

You know, we didn't really know how rough and violent Texas could be.

And it's possible that she just walked into a cafe or you know, got some coffee.

You know, she left very early that morning and she was just stopping somewhere and she said, hey, how are you, and some guys like you know, looking at her car, and she wore gold jewelry and they got no conversation, and she said, yeah, I'm looking for property.

And maybe someone was like, oh, I've got property right down the road, you know, you want to go see it, and you know, just some mix of maybe just some evil person crossed paths with her.

Maybe it was even racially motivated, and her life ended, and you know, car was chopped up for parts and the stones were taken out of the rings and sold it pawnshops.

I don't think it could be worse than that.

He spoke to me about the pain of losing his mom.

You know, I've had a lot of time to heal, I've had a lot of time to think about it.

I've had a lot of ways to make my peace with it.

But it doesn't really make it that much easier, and I think all of us are still looking for an answer.

Doesn't change how much people love our mom or love our father, you know, doesn't change any of those things.

It's just sort of an open would you know that you just have to walk over, you know, losing my mom.

She was obviously one of the most important people in my life.

We were very close, and you know, I live my life every day as if it's my last.

He has a soft spot and his hard for other families who have lost someone As a missing person a Fate says he doesn't wish on anyone.

I think it's an awful way for a person's life to end.

I wouldn't wish that anybody to have someone like that.

You know, someone has been right up the world like that.

To go like that without being able to pay respect to that person in the right way, you know, it makes you so angry.

Following the funeral service, people gathered at Kate Elizabeth Middle School to trade stories about Tot, her infectious laughter and her boundless energy.

Gen Zy imagined what Tot would have said if she had been there.

I know that she feels lucky for having gotten the time to spend with all of us.

I think she would say, thank you.

My name is Kristen Stevie, and thank you so much for joining me.

If you like what you heard and you want more, you can find my podcast, Murder she Told on any platform.

If you have any information about the disappearance of Todd Harriman, I encourage you to contact the Leake City Police Department at two eight one three three two two five sixty six.

A very special thanks to Chinsee for sharing his memories with us.

A detailed list of sources and photos can be found at murder sheytold dot com.

Thank you for listening, and stay safe New Mexico