Deep Dive
Shownotes Transcript
His whole life, he grew up thinking that his mom had abandoned him. He didn't know. Her whole story was a mystery. He thought it was just, she walked out and she lived her own life and she didn't want him. And that's huge. And to find out at
They didn't even know what happened to her either.
You just seriously have to ask yourself the same questions over and over again. After the 17th time, the same questions. You know what? That just dawned on me. I never thought about that. Or I just remembered this. I'm happy to tell the story over and over again because more questions come up. Honestly, we have more questions than we do answers. The more we dig.
In February of 1981, a 29-year-old mother of two disappeared without a trace from Camden, New Jersey. The story goes that she left her home, heading out to buy a pack of cigarettes and stamps. And then she simply never came back.
Family members claim they tried to report her missing, but strangely, no official record of a missing person's report exists, until 41 years later. It was as though Roberta Michaels Hopkins had vanished, slipping through the cracks of time, her name seemingly forgotten. Roberta's son, an infant when she disappeared, spent much of his childhood in foster care, lost in a world without answers.
Years later, he had a daughter, Trinity, someone who would unknowingly step into a mystery far bigger than she could have ever imagined. In 2019, Trinity, just for fun, sent off a DNA sample to one of those commercial databases. She never expected it to lead her to the unsettling truth that her grandmother had disappeared, and shockingly, no one had been searching for her.
What began as a simple curiosity soon became an obsession. Trinity dug deeper, uncovering a tangled web of unanswered questions and missing pieces. By 2022, she had managed to ensure that Roberta's disappearance had finally been acknowledged, officially reporting her as a missing person. But how is it that Roberta's story lay buried for so long? The mystery still lingers, and Trinity is determined to uncover the truth.
I'm Marissa, and from Wondery, this is episode 476 of The Vanished, Roberta Michaels Hopkins' story.
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Some cases arrive on our desk with a wealth of information, meticulously crafted timelines, video footage, and cell phone records that piece together every detail. Others, however, come to us with nothing but a trail of breadcrumbs, barely enough to lead us anywhere. Roberta's case tragically falls into the latter category, an elusive mystery scattered with only the faintest clues waiting to be pieced together. And those breadcrumbs sat for four decades, just waiting to be discovered.
It took the passage of time and Roberta's tenacious granddaughter, Trinity, to uncover them, determined to unravel a story that had been lost for far too long. Growing up in South Jersey, Trinity knew little about the roots of her paternal family. She certainly had no idea that a cold case lay dormant, just waiting to be discovered. Then, on a whim, she decided to take one of those DNA tests, and the results turned her world completely upside down. Here's Trinity.
I grew up knowing nothing about my father's side of the family. My dad and my mom had always told me, we knew you're Trinidadian, but we know you're probably, I don't know, somebody said like Irish, German, and French or something like that. I never knew that side of the family. Then in 2019, I finally took my ancestry DNA. All I knew was that my grandmother's name was Roberta and that was just it. I searched for her name and shortly after it popped up and I was like, holy cow. Yeah.
It happened all so quickly. I mean, I had my cousin reach out to me. You're a part of our family tree. I don't know any of these names because I had no clue. They had a picture of her. They were like, we know of Roberta, but they really didn't have anything about her disappearance overall.
The family members Trinity discovered through the DNA database led her to Roberta's sister. Excited, she thought this would be the breakthrough she'd been waiting for. She imagined that her grandmother's sister would hold the key to unlocking the mystery, ready to share a wealth of information about what had happened all those years ago.
Then they connected me to Judy, which is Roberta's sister. And she wanted to meet. We wanted to meet because Judy had no clue that Roberta even had a granddaughter. This was all new to her because she had lost all communication with Roberta and knew nothing about anything that had to do with her. Then we met February of 2020.
We were thinking that we were going to get answers from each other. And instead, we were met with more questions. Well, if her family knows nothing and we know nothing, I guess someone's got to try to figure it out. And so that's how I kind of started to do a deep dive into what happened to her because my dad never knew anything about his mom. And then the family knew nothing either.
Roberta's story mirrors many other cold cases we've covered on this show, defined by the passage of time, with a new generation stepping in to try to solve the mystery. In a way, Roberta's story has also become Trinity's story. Fueled by unwavering determination, Trinity took it upon herself to ensure that Roberta was officially reported missing, and she hasn't stopped searching for answers since.
Though Roberta disappeared from Camden, New Jersey, it was the Cinnaminson Police Department that ultimately stepped up to take the report. Trinity walked us through how this unfolded.
I had been doing as much as I could dig up and could find and could do from 2020 to 2022. Every now and then I would pick it up and put it back down. And until 2022, I found NamUs. I guess I searched up how to make a missing persons report after so many years. And
And NamUs was the first to pop up, and so I entered her information. And what I did have, and it seemed like shortly after, one of the correspondents reached out to me and said, we're going to connect this case to Cinnamons and PD. Cinnamons and PD reached out to me and said, can you come in? Someone stepped up and volunteered and said, I want to take this head on. After 43 years, no one makes the case. We felt blessed.
You essentially think you're going to find nothing with it being so long. But we had a detective volunteer. Judy has come in with me to the police department a few times. They've gotten her DNA. They've got my DNA.
Trinity began piecing together every shred of information she could find, talking to family members, combing through old yearbooks, and sifting through newspaper clippings. Not that Roberta's disappearance was ever reported on in the newspapers, at least not in 1981 or any time until 2024, but there were some small clues left behind.
Roberta Ann Michaels was born on February 26, 1952. Roberta was the youngest of four children born to Robert and Elizabeth Michaels. She had two older sisters and one brother. A yearbook from 1970 revealed that she graduated from Pemberton High School. In 1972, she married a man and the two had a daughter the following year. But Roberta's marriage didn't last, and the couple eventually parted ways.
For Trinity, a significant part of the mystery lies in truly understanding who her grandmother was as a person. Much of her search has been a deeply personal journey to uncover the woman behind the mystery. Though they share a blood connection, even her father, who was just an infant when Roberta disappeared, never had the chance to know her. The gaps in their shared history only deepen the mystery, making the search for answers all the more elusive.
I don't really know too much about her personality in our childhood. She has three siblings all together, but only one is living. I knew she grew up in Pemberton, Brown Mills area, graduated from Pemberton. I don't know what she liked to do. I don't know if she was super social. I don't know any of those things.
In her search for answers and a deeper understanding of her grandmother, Trinity has connected with people who knew Roberta, offering her a glimpse into the kind of person Roberta truly was.
I was able to contact some friends as well, a person that she went out on a date with. It didn't go any farther than the one date that they had, but he said she was a great person. We were able to find an old yearbook where she said the only thing that she wanted to be in life was successful. And she was very involved in sports and drama club or something. So she was very out there. She wasn't a loner or a person that kept to herself. She definitely had a determined spirit about her.
At some point, Roberta began a relationship with a man named Kumar Sr. The earliest record of them together was a photograph, dated March 11, 1979. By July of 1980, they had a son together, Trinity's father. The last trace anyone has of Roberta is a letter that she had written, dated February 1981. After that, she seemingly vanished without a trace. Trinity has been working tirelessly to pinpoint the last time Roberta was seen alive.
All roads seem to lead back to that letter from February 1981, when Trinity's father was just seven months old. She also uncovered a notice in a local newspaper about a storage unit of Roberta's, set to be auctioned off, with the timeline aligning with that same February date. But after that, everything goes silent.
He was an infant, seven months old. So we're assuming that it was February based off the letter that we got. There was a storage unit auction sale May of 1981. And New Jersey's rule is that if you go 61 days without paying your storage unit, it's allowed to be auctioned. So that 61-day count lands right in February 2021.
One reason Trinity's father grew up with so little information about his mother was that he spent much of his childhood in the foster care system. He was briefly with his father or in the care of other paternal relatives, but he was still very young when they lost contact, leaving him with only fragmented memories and unanswered questions about his past.
After she had disappeared, Kumar Sr. raised my dad until he was eventually arrested and deported back to Trinidad.
So that's the other thing that's a little bit mind-boggling because you would think that once foster care and child protective services comes in and does their work as far as where you place a child, they knew nothing about Roberta. There was no missing person report. There was no death certificate. What we're trying to figure out now is what information they had that made them place my dad in the foster care
We did recently discover that he went with Kumar Sr.'s side of the family for a little bit, and then for some reason they didn't keep him, and then he went from foster home to foster home. And my poor dad thought that his parents were going to come back for him eventually. So he grew up throughout his whole entire life and thought that either his mom was going to come back or his dad was going to come back, and unfortunately neither ever happened. Her side of the family says they had no clue what happened to him. They just always assumed that he was with his father.
With so little to go on, and her grandmother's disappearance shrouded in mystery, Trinity made the decision to dig deeper into Roberta's life. She reached out to Roberta's sister, hoping to learn more about her first marriage and the reasons behind its sudden end. As far as her previous marriage, she says that they had a great marriage. They would take the kids down to the shore. Their
Their husband would do a motorcycle club together. They owned German Shepherds. Judy paints this picture of a pretty healthy and stable relationship. And I have pictures of their bridal party. It looks like a great time. So what Judy said is that just one day...
They got divorced and she lost custody. She doesn't know how or why. She just says they had this great relationship. And then the next thing she knew, she was divorced, lost custody and had a baby with someone else. That's pretty much how she puts it straight forward.
There's all these years that we don't know about. And Judy's 80 years old. I'm sure a lot of it is memory and trying to jog her memory. But her ex-husband was allowing her daughter to be around. So it was interesting because he was still allowing that relationship to happen, even though he had custody from what we understand.
Her ex-husband did get remarried in 1980. So her ex-husband and her daughter moved down to the South. That's about as much as I know about their relationship so far.
For Trinity, she had hoped that those who knew Roberta would be eager to share what they remembered and also want answers just as much as she did. But strangely, she's been met with silence. Her attempts to reach out to Roberta's ex-husband and her aunt, the daughter Roberta had from her first marriage, have all been unsuccessful, leading Trinity to navigate the mystery on her own.
We have tried reaching out to them and they just don't reach back out to us. I sent her a message on LinkedIn and said, Hi, my name is Trinity. I don't want you to think I'm asking for anything. I just hope you saw my email. I just want to hopefully eventually have a relationship with you whenever you're ready. Your niece Trinity and she read it and didn't say anything. I sent her, I think, two emails because I didn't want to push the envelope or be pushy. And it's been two years now and she's never said anything.
As far as her ex-husband, I did reach out to him. When I called him the very first time, he said he knew nothing. He actually answered the phone with a question and asked me if I ever knew what happened to her. And I said, no. So he said he didn't know anything either. I did say, could you let your daughter know I'm going to be reaching out to her? I never heard from him again. But I did saw what I asked if I could call him. And he actually told me no. You would think that maybe if your mom disappeared for so long,
You would want to have a relationship with your niece or your brother. She has a whole brother.
Trinity isn't sure if Roberta's disappearance is a painful memory her daughter isn't ready to confront. Has she always believed that Roberta had abandoned her? The answers to these questions remain unclear. But what Trinity does know is that she wishes to build a relationship with her aunt and give her father the opportunity to reconnect with his sister. Having grown up without both parents, he never formed strong family bonds, and the chance to experience that connection would be meaningful.
After Roberta's marriage ended, Trinity discovered that she began seeing Kumar Sr. Trinity told us more. We have a picture of Kumar Sr. and his son from a previous marriage. The picture also has Roberta's daughter in it. So Roberta's taking the picture of the three of them at a park. The picture that we have was March of 1979.
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That's q-u-i-n-c-e dot com slash vanished to get free shipping and 365-day returns. quince.com slash vanished. Trinity managed to get her hands on a letter that Roberta wrote her siblings in 1979. In it, there are subtle hints of a growing strain in some family relationships, a tension that seemed to emerge after the passing of Roberta's mother. It was as if the cracks in the family dynamic were beginning to show.
The letter that she writes in 1979 to her siblings, she says something along the lines of, Dad doesn't want us to have any complications because what they were doing was her mother had passed away, so they were delegating the items. So it was a specific day that they were doing this. She's saying, Dad doesn't want us to have any arguments. He wants us to do this in a civil matter. It definitely says that there was issues or complications.
within the family. But Judy doesn't ever say what it's about or what it was about or what was going on. And that could just very well be because she kind of wants to leave water under her bridge. And that was old family drama. But there's never any context around what the actual issue was. Here's Trinity giving voice to her grandmother's handwritten letter, reading aloud the words that Roberta once penned, offering us a glimpse into her grandmother's world in 1979.
Tomorrow, besides other days, much has been on my mind. Since I try not, in quotes, to bring my problems on you, I won't again, but this pertains to our, in quotes, family situation. Tonight, again, I tried to sleep, but now at 4.30 a.m., I am writing you a letter. I know that this subject should be brought up later, but after talking to Daddy, I'm
I feel quote unquote before Sunday. You should know my feelings. This is very interesting. She says, Judy, you know, this week only to call me at this number before four o'clock, leave a message after four to talk to me directly.
Please think and talk about this and let me know how everyone feels. Please, I think it should be decided before packing up so we all are organized and can get done orderly. Daddy talked about this before it was on his mind. As far as he's concerned, he wants mommy's ring. As the week goes on, he may see other things, but made very clear he's not going to do it.
his ideas and plans of what he's doing. He wants all of us to lovingly and peacefully, with no arguments, pack up everything. As I lay here, I'm thinking, trying, unselfishly, I hope, of mommy's passion. I'm asking this, if you all feel it's too much, let's no arguing, but discuss it, okay? My sister and brother and sister-in-law really don't know me as me now.
oh well, we'll get to know each other as time goes on. That's loving each other and really, underlined, being a family I would like. And then she lists mommy's bedroom, mommy's storage closet, mommy's sewing machine, one of the tables and lamps, two drawers, electric clock. And then
And then she says, I'd like to go through the clothes and pictures also. I know this must seem like a lot, but rather than give to needy people, give to us who love and appreciate and value mommy's love too. Let's stick together and make daddy happy. He's most underlined important.
Judy personally underlined, I quote, thank you, quote, for feelings told openly or felt openly on the phone. I do love you and I know you're really there anytime I need you.
I hope you will stand by my feelings, not burdens. We should have talked before this, but as they say, it's never too late to try. And that was in quotes. Talk to you later. Quote, thank you, quote, for your support and something of my not being there today. That really means a lot. Love, Roberta. P.S. Excuse my writing and spelling.
Roberta's sister has held onto a letter penned by Roberta, a piece of correspondence that was passed down to her after their father passed away. This letter remains the last known communication from Roberta, and its postmark is dated February 17, 1981, the date that's often listed as the day Roberta disappeared. However, it's still unclear whether this was truly the last day she was seen alive. It's simply the last breadcrumb anyone has been able to uncover. The return
The return address on the envelope points to an apartment on Everett Street in Camden, New Jersey. The letter was written shortly after Roberta's father remarried, and though the full context isn't clear, it seems Roberta had been given the wrong address for the wedding venue. She expressed frustration over missing the celebration, and from her words, it appears she felt the mix-up was no accident, that her family had intentionally excluded her.
She wrote to her dad and her stepmother. Robert, her father, held onto it and then once Robert passed away, Judy inherited everything and so she had that letter because it came from his house. So her father got remarried.
Then the last letter that she writes in 1981, I don't want to point fingers or blame or say that we understand the situation completely. But from what we were reading, she definitely seemed to have gotten the wrong address, whether it was on purpose or...
Someone accidentally gave her the wrong address, but she was frantically searching. I mean, she went from church asking people and it seemed like wherever she was visiting, it wasn't even close to where the wedding actually was, which is a shame because you could tell she tried very hard because she says, even with our bad inspection sticker, we still risked it with our bad car. I had a dress made. We got all dressed up.
She does say she tried to phone her ex-husband and make arrangements for her daughter to come to this wedding that they were going to, but her ex-husband either didn't call or was not responsive.
I don't understand why I was given a wrong address, but I tried so hard. And then at the end of that letter, she says, I won't bother anyone anymore. It definitely alludes to the fact that she was saying, I'm done trying because I've tried. So that's pretty much the context of the letter. She just counts her steps of all the things she did. She said all she wanted to do was say her blessings, give her family her wedding gift. She wasn't able to do that.
There's a story that Roberta was last seen leaving the Camden apartment she shared with the father of her infant son, though this has never been confirmed. She reportedly walked out during a blizzard to buy cigarettes and stamps. Trinity told us what she knows about that story and where it originated.
What they were saying was she walked out on Kumar Sr. and my dad. Kumar Sr.'s ex-wife lived a couple of yards down from them. She could see that they were together. She said she never got to know Roberta. She just said she would see her every now and then from a window blind. But she was the one that's been giving the story about Roberta walking out.
during the winter or a blizzard. She says that she was told that by Kumar Sr. So she's the only one that we've gotten that story from. I'm assuming that it was more so winter because she would have gone on foot from what we understand because it doesn't seem like she ever had her license. Every time she's addressing going somewhere in the letter, she's always talking about needing to make arrangements. So we're assuming she would have went on foot if that was the case and there probably wasn't any blizzard.
Roberta's oldest sister, an only living sibling, shared with Trinity that she distinctly remembers Kumar Sr. calling her after Roberta failed to return home. She shared that she did attempt to report her sister missing, but unfortunately, law enforcement showed little interest in the case at the time.
Judy said, Kumar Sr. called and said, do you know where Roberta is or have you seen her? Have you talked to her? Because we don't know where she is. She hasn't come back and left her things behind, her pocketbook, all her things were still at home. Judy said, no, I haven't talked to her, haven't seen her. And that's when Judy went to Camden PD to report her missing. And they shrugged it off and said she's old enough to...
It's unclear exactly when or where the story originated, but Roberta's sister also told Trinity that over time, the family came to believe that Roberta may have gone to Florida.
Judy says that the family also believed that she was down in Florida. So they have family in Florida. We still have family in Florida from what I understand. One of our other sisters passed away in 1978, but she passed away in Florida. So there was family down there. I guess because her sister had gone down there...
They just assumed that Roberta was following suit. But at this point, the one sister had already passed away. I don't know if they assumed that she was down there visiting cousins or her great aunt. The Florida story may have been more of a hopeful assumption from Roberta's family, as there's no evidence to suggest she had traveled there in February 1981 or at any point after. For Trinity, this explanation just doesn't seem to add up.
Why was it assumed that she was in Florida if Kumar Sr. called and said she left everything behind? Because how do you leave for Florida without identification or without a purse, without your suitcase? You're leaving your seven-month baby behind. You're going to make arrangements for your baby to be with someone. It is definitely frustrating because it gives more holes than it does closure because if she was in Florida, why didn't anyone follow up? From
From what I heard, eventually there was a phone call down there. Oh, is Roberta down there? And they were like, no. And then that point on, they were like, all right, well, I guess we don't really know where she is. It seems they passed that rumor down. So no one did ever question, where is she? She's in Florida. It wasn't even a question because it made it seem like she was already accounted for when she really wasn't. It was never an answer. It was just an assumption that people took as concrete.
In the early 1980s, Camden, New Jersey was a city caught in a period of deep transition. Once a thriving industrial hub, it had begun to struggle with the decline of manufacturing jobs, economic hardships, and rising crime rates. The streets that once bustled with factory workers now echoed the sounds of uncertainty. While Camden's waterfront offered some hope for revitalization, much of the city was left grappling with poverty, unemployment, and a sense of lost potential.
Just across the river from Philadelphia, Camden often lived in the shadow of its more prosperous neighbor, struggling to establish its own identity. For many, it was a city defined by its challenges, yet still full of life and stories waiting to be told. A May 10, 1981 article in the New York Times titled, Camden is Down but Far From Out, chronicled the struggles the city was facing at the time. It said, Camden is afflicted with poverty, crime, unemployment, vacations,
vast slums and tremendous tracts of emptiness downtown, where block after block was bulldozed for grand development plans that never materialized. The big stores are gone, along with their clientele, and the small shops along Broadway to the south are mostly vacant. Many cities have problems, but Camden, by any standard, is one of the sickest around.
Amidst this backdrop, Roberta disappeared without a trace in 1981. Camden, New Jersey has had a reputation for decades, and when some people heard that Roberta was living there, they jumped to conclusions about her. But Trinity said there's no proof that Roberta was involved in anything nefarious. She was simply a young mother of two, doing her best to survive in a city that, like her, was struggling to stay afloat.
That's speculation because of the area she lived in. And it kind of makes me sad because I never would have assumed that just because she was living in Camden. Camden was horrible back then. To me, Camden is horrible now. But I guess there must have been such a difference between then and now. To me, growing up, Camden has always been known. You don't go there. Definitely don't drive through there. And the one time I did drive through there, would never ever do it again because it scared the life out of me.
Definitely a bad area, but why jump the gun and say she was probably involved in this and she was probably doing that when there's no concrete evidence behind that? It's purely an assumption. And I feel like if she was a sex worker, then that means there's more names that we could have had. That's a drastic claim to say about someone who can't even defend themselves.
On the other hand, Trinity discovered that Kumar Sr. had been involved in drug activity, and he was ultimately deported. While it's unclear what Roberta knew about this at the time, it certainly raises some lingering questions.
Kumar Sr. was involved in drug crimes and things like that. He was deported. But the story goes that they had no idea what he was involved in or who he was until I came in the picture and I was able to fill in that part for them. So if you knew nothing about her partner, why are we assuming that she was even involved?
Besides Roberta's sister, there doesn't seem to be many people around who have much information to add. Trinity has connected with other family members who remembered hearing her name, but not much more than that.
Her brother passed away. Her sister passed away. Her sister never had any kids. And then her brother had one boy, which is my second cousin. I talked to him. We just kind of started forming a relationship. But he says that he does remember her name being mentioned. But again, it was told to almost the entire family that she was down in Florida. So that's what he knew of his Aunt Bertie. Her nickname was Bertie. That was all they were given. Judy
Judy's children as well, they have said they only remember the name Birdie. Very hush-hush.
We also spoke with Ken and Melissa, the family members Trinity connected with after submitting her DNA to an online database. Ken is Roberta's nephew, and it was his wife, Melissa, who had used Ancestry years prior for a school project. They're both deeply intrigued by the family mystery. However, they too are left frustrated and puzzled by the lack of information surrounding Roberta's disappearance.
We ended up figuring out with Trinity kind of how everything came about and how she was able to connect me because of being on Ancestry. I was on Ancestry for some genome projects that I was doing in school years and years and years ago. So that's kind of how then she was able to pull my name and then realize that I'm married to Ken. So she was able to kind of pull it all together.
I knew nothing of Roberta at all.
none of us really know a ton. I mean, obviously I did as far as... I mean, I remember growing up hearing about my Aunt Bertie and I knew I met her. But when she went missing, I think I was seven or eight. At that point, there wasn't a ton of contact that I can recall growing up. But I always knew and I'd heard her name and I'd heard the story that my grandfather had hired a private investigator to look for her. And I always heard rumors of Florida for whatever reason. And this is from...
seven, eight-year-old's perspective of just what I heard. An uncle on my mother's side. So my uncle, James, was a lieutenant at St. Vincent Police Department. So my mom's side was actually kind of weirdly tied in because I think he kind of did a cursory just to try to look into it a little bit. So I've done some digging and it seems like there's a lot of extended family that even we didn't even know about living in Florida. Yeah.
Well, so my grandfather's brother, Bernard, he was from actually this area outside Philly where we're from right now for a while, but he lived in Florida for a long time. When he passed, he was down there. So I don't know if he was down there when all this happened and that might have been a family connection, but Bernard died knowing how we handle missing persons and different things, especially when it's an adult. Adults can come and go and back
Back in 81, I'm sure they didn't look at it as deeply as we would today. And even depending on the PD and how they're staffed and what the protocols are, you want to think that there's more uniformity in how that goes, but there actually isn't. Cinnamon obviously opened it and they took their DNA, like my aunt Judy's DNA, Trinity's DNA. I spoke to one of their lieutenants about probably two years ago now when they reopened it on their end, but I
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Even a brief delay in reporting a person missing can make solving the case incredibly challenging. As anyone can imagine, being four decades behind only amplifies the difficulty. Trinity had hoped that once Roberta's case was opened a few years ago, there would be some progress. However, she admits that cold cases are often only worked as time permits. And with law enforcement's heavy caseload, it seems there's little time available to fully investigate this one. For Trinity, it's a
it often feels as though Roberta has never truly been a priority and that the case continues to slip through the cracks. I don't want to downplay the things that they've been doing, but we're thinking that someone volunteered to take our case after 43 years. We're going to get things rolling. And it turned out not to be that way. I mean, it's been two years and we still have really gotten nothing done. And I hate to put it that way. We were waiting for DNA. It was
It was actually NamUs. And it just so happened at the time that we were submitting the DNA that they were changing their facility for DNA testing. And so we had to wait for them to get a whole different facility for months before they wanted to move forward because my guess is that they were thinking, well, if the DNA comes back on a Jane Doe, then that kind of changes what we're doing. It changes their trajectory of how they're going to go about handling the case.
And then another thing that we've been waiting for is the age progression. We did this over a year ago. They told us it was approved and fine in September. It was completed, and it has yet to be released. We've already lost 43 years' worth of time, so let's kind of have some oomph behind this. We finally got the DNA back. We got that in January, so it's now 2024, and things are just now picking up.
We submitted a record request to the Cinnaminson Police Department and contacted them to request an interview. Our record request was denied citing an open investigation. The police chief responded to our interview request, stating, On February 5, 2022, the Cinnaminson Police Department took a missing persons report from a relative of Roberta Ann Michaels Hopkins, who was last seen sometime in February of 1981 in Camden.
Although Roberta Ann Michaels Hopkins did not have any connection to Cinnamonson Township,
The Cinemans and Police Department, under the requirements of law, accepted the report of a missing person without delay and took the investigative lead into the case. Detective Jeffrey Chiumento has spent over two years exhausting every investigative lead in an attempt to locate Roberta. During the investigation, he reached out to the New Jersey State Police Missing Persons Unit, who, through their Forensic Artist Unit, was able to come up with an age-progressed photo of Roberta. Since this is an ongoing investigation, no
no further information will be released concerning this case. We also reached out to Roberta's sister, hoping that she would speak with us. She's the closest remaining relative. However, her response to our email was simply not interested. We first spoke to Trinity in early 2024 and then reconnected with her at the end of the year to check on any progress that had been made.
I've been down this rabbit hole of trying to figure out as much as I can because I hate to say it, but I just feel like the PD is just not doing all they can do. Since you and I have talked, they were able to scrape the DNA off the stamp, but they said that they've run it through the system. No other Jane Doe has come back.
matching the DNA that we have. They've tried to chase down medical records and dental records because there's a specific case called the cheerleader in a trunk, which many, many, many people have reached out to us about. The 3D thing for the cheerleader in a trunk is eerily close to Roberta's face. Some of the details do match her. The fact that the body was found in Maryland, which isn't too far of
of a distance to not be possible. The only thing that that body has is dental records. And so the only way to match Roberta to that case would be to find Roberta's dental records. And one of the key things about the trailer in the trunk, her teeth have gold and silver caps. So far, all the people that we've asked that seen her around that time said that she did not have that in her teeth.
And that's something that you would definitely note about someone. The PD has gone back and forth with the county that has that. From what I understand, it's either not her, they haven't been able to get in contact with the person that's in charge of the case, or it's just been all together, just kind of pushed to the side. So that has definitely been a potential case for us. We've had a few others, a body found in the Pinelands. From
From what the PD is telling me, and the PD doesn't really give me too much information because they can't, but nothing has come back, which is surprising because the fact that we don't have a body, we don't have a person, but we were able to get DNA off, I don't even know, 40-year-old letter. We're blessed to have that. And we kind of felt that we would have an answer by now.
The PD was able to do the age progression finally. And we do now have a picture of what she would look like at 72 years old. And she looks very, very similar to her sister who's still alive that obviously declined to be on the podcast. But it is good to have that for my dad. The fact that it is 43 years old, it is.
Also, a call to action. The clock is ticking. We don't know when our ex-husband will pass away. We don't know when our sister will pass away. There's a stepsister as well. There are people, we've got cousins that used to hang out with her that are still alive. They have the opportunity to speak. I spoke with some of them.
Since we first spoke in early 2024, Trinity has continued her search, tirelessly reaching out to anyone who may have known Roberta or heard anything about her disappearance. She shared with us some of the new discoveries she's made along the way.
I've been chasing people down and I've been able to find people from 1981, which is really surprising. I've been able to find, I guess we would call it a family member on Roberta's partner's side, which would be my grandfather. So my grandfather, Humar Jagdayo Sr., had a cousin that lived in the area at the time through marriage. And I was able to find her contact information because I knew my dad lived with her.
at some point in his life before he went to foster care. I called her and I asked her, I said, did you ever get to see Roberta or did you ever get to hear of anything about her? And so she gave me some background on Kumar. Some people suspect that he did have something to do with her disappearance. And she said that he would not hurt a fly even though he was old.
always drunk. He was never the fighter. His cousins were the fighters and they would fight for him, but he would never fight. But he was an out of his mind drunk. And the way that she came to take care of my dad was because Kumar came knocking on the door one day and said, I need to go find his mom. Can you watch him for me? And this would have been years after her disappearance, because at the time he was about
five or six years old. And that many years later, whether that was a crutch to drop my dad off or whether that was a real deal for him, that's what she was told. And so that was really interesting information that we found out. I was also able to find some other foster parents and I called and I asked them if they ever heard of anything about his mom because my dad bounced around from house to house.
Group home. He was with people in the neighborhood because his dad became homeless and was just on and off in the streets. I've contacted at least two or three people, four people from that time period that had my dad at one point in their care.
And no one has an answer. And I thought for sure they would have had an answer, being that they were the closest ones to this situation. I was able to contact a neighbor that lived pretty close. Roberta and my grandfather and my dad were in an apartment complex. And so everybody knew everybody. It was a primarily black neighborhood. There was someone that lived there at the time,
And they said that they had never seen anybody of that name or anything like that. They said if a Caucasian female was living there, that they would have known that. Again, just really odd that she was just able to kind of disappear in thin air and without a trace and kind of be forgotten about. Now no one knows what happened to her, or at least that's what we've been told.
Trinity has been diligently piecing together the clues she's uncovered, following the breadcrumbs wherever they lead. One of Roberta's friends shared something intriguing with her, though Trinity isn't quite sure what to make of it yet. The one friend that we did get to talk to, she said that she was very close with her until they weren't. She didn't really go into details as to why they weren't close. I know that she moved away to Montana. She said that Roberta had
a very bubbly personality about her and she said that she believes that she remembers going into a local store and seeing a newspaper and a missing person's description but it was just a sketch it didn't have a name to it but it said something along the lines of do you know who I am or who am I and so she said that she really truly thought at the time that it could have been Roberta but
But she lost the paper and never knew what came about that and was surprised to hear that she had been missing all these years going back over these messages.
Here she says, Bertie, she was a sweetheart. I don't want to say how I feel personally. These are my private thoughts. But until I hear different, she will always be on my mind. And I still search Google on missing and found persons. In all these years, you're the only one that has even asked about her. And I'm hoping this is a good sign that she'll be found. God works in funny ways. Bertie was a good friend. She had a fun personality. She was more daring than me, though. We laughed a lot. We were normal. If
If she got bad, then I would say that she got that way being in Camden, Philadelphia, Trenton, was a lot of drugs. Bertie had few friends around Browns Mills and most of the people we knew are passed away. I still think about that pencil sketch that I saw. If I could remember where I saw it, it might hold a key. I keep thinking it was a do you recognize me sketch. Just know one thing, I don't know more than what I've told you. When she lived in Camden, I lost touch with her. I'm
I married in 1971 and she married in 1972. I don't know what she got involved with or who. Me and her were like tomboys. We loved playing soccer and baseball, etc., and didn't dress frilly. And if I knew more about her and what happened to her, I absolutely would tell you. Truthfully, I thought her family knew more than what they were saying, especially not reporting her missing, etc.,
I will always keep looking for my friend Bertie, and I knew that no one bothered to look at her way back when I saw that sketch. Trust, I would have searched for her. There have been some family rumors about Roberta heading to Florida, but so far no one has found any trace of her there. Since we first spoke, Trinity tracked down some relatives who were living in Florida at the time and gathered small pieces of information from them, filling in the puzzle ever so slightly.
I did also get in contact with some cousins and family members down in Florida, which we are very fortunate about because they also had a connection with Roberta. One of the cousins went to New Jersey and lived with Roberta and her husband for the entire summer.
Roberta was a new mom at the time, and her husband was working at some sort of dealership that I believe also had to deal with motorcycles, was big into the motorcycle community. But he said he remembered that she was doing things not ladylike.
He said he really didn't want to go too into it, but he knew that she was involving herself in some things that were not popular in the 1970s. He said that her husband treated her well. He really loved her. He always wanted to have the opportunity to thank him for taking him in during the summer because he thought it was a really kind thing to do. He said that her husband showed him how to ride motorcycles, and he said it was the best summer of his entire life.
He also tried to get in contact with him and he didn't want any contact. They do know at one point in time, Roberta did want to come move down and live in Florida. And they don't know at what point that was, but it was after she had her first baby. And they don't know why she wanted to live there, but they didn't have enough room for her because they had already taken in her sister, Nancy. And so we don't know if Roberta ever went down to Florida, necessarily.
maybe visited at some point because the rumor was Roberta had run away with some boyfriend and was living a life in Florida, which is why they weren't really too worried about her being a missing person. But I'm really not sure who created that rumor because now it seems like that rumor was created to kind of maybe stop inquiring minds because
because if she were to run away with this so-called boyfriend of whoever it was, why was her son never mentioned? And it's just,
complicated. But we are excited to eventually meet these Florida cousins because they were sent letters and stuff as well. They don't have the envelopes, but they have pictures and letters from Roberta that we don't have. We're very excited to go down there and get all that information and to meet them and probably find out more than we know as of now.
Trinity shared that Roberta had a stepsister, and through connecting with her, she uncovered a significant piece of information that shifted Trinity's perspective on the growing divide within the family leading up to Roberta's disappearance. This new insight may also explain why Roberta was provided an incorrect address for the wedding venue when her father remarried. I was able to get in contact with a stepsister who
Roberta's father remarried and already had a daughter. She got to get to know the family and got acclimated. I messaged her and I asked her if I could get an opinion on the father because I heard some things here and there that he wasn't the nicest person and he also had a drinking issue.
And so I thought someone from an outside perspective or wasn't immediately connected to him. And this is what she wrote to me. I don't really know how much other people have told you. I never met Roberta. I only know what my mother or...
or my stepdad Bob had told me. I know he was greatly upset over a disappearance and tried to locate her with what resources were available at the time, but yes, he was not a kind man. He was not the kind of grandfather I wanted my girls to have in their lives, but we may do. He was very prejudiced, which was not acceptable. We had words several times. He knew exactly what I meant, and I stuck to it."
And we moved on with our lives. We were married and they were much older than I. So I thought that was really interesting being that Roberta was with someone of color. And I really want to know if that caused a lot of strife and separation within the family.
I was also told from a cousin who had said Roberta had a spark about her and Roberta's dad would oftentimes try to dull it. I thought that was interesting, too. It was a perspective that I hadn't had before. It really just makes you wonder. Clearly, Roberta was estranged from the family being that no one really knew about.
her disappearance. And when they did finally know about it, there was no information given by anyone about it. It was hush hush around the family. Her nephew said he heard about her, but she was never talked about. And he said, honestly, it wasn't until I popped up in the picture that he even remembered that he had an Aunt Roberta because of how quiet it was.
And I thought that was really interesting because as a family, even when someone passes away or even when someone's not that close, there's usually remembrance. Oh, we miss this person so much. It's so-and-so's birthday. Nothing. So it's hard. It's really hard to point fingers at anyone because there's so many question marks.
When we spoke with Ken and Melissa, Ken also made a point along these lines. He felt that his grandfather likely wouldn't have approved of Roberta's relationship with Kumar Sr., as he was known to hold prejudiced views, and interracial relationships were widely disapproved during that era. This revelation caused Trinity to pause and reconsider everything she had learned so far. She now wonders if the reason why so many family members have been tight-lipped
could be because they carry a sense of shame about how Roberta was treated before she ultimately vanished. Looking at this through the lens of today's society, where some progress has been made, it may be uncomfortable for some to confront or discuss these difficult topics.
1981 is when she's writing to her dad and very clearly upset and says, I won't bother anyone anymore. And that's the last minute of contact with anyone. When we read the letter of how she was scrambling to try to find Christ,
her dad's wedding and how she went to place to place to place to place to place to try to find this wedding. And she was bringing her partner with her and her son, who was half and half. It kind of answers the question why she wasn't given the right information. It was probably seen as a disgrace to Robert's friends that were attending the wedding and coming to this ceremony. He probably didn't want to claim her.
and what she was doing. So I definitely do think that that probably did play a role in this entire situation. And the family members, maybe Robert had said, oh, she's running off with so-and-so and kind of just left it at that. So I definitely think that that could have been a huge factor.
For sure. And I think a lot of us reflected on that as well. Definitely eye opening and kind of gives us insight to what Roberta was dealing with when she was having a son of color with somebody that was of color. It makes you think what other family members saw that way. And it makes me feel for my grandmother and makes me wonder.
If I would have been accepted because I've obviously of color as well. It makes me wonder if things didn't go the way that they went, would we have ever been accepted into the family? So there's a lot. There's a lot that we have found out over the past year of doing this. A lot of new information, a lot of more things that we're sitting on and hoping becomes revealed.
In the end, Trinity is left with the story of how her grandmother disappeared during a blizzard in February 1981, when she walked out of her apartment to buy cigarettes and stamps. However, there's no way to confirm if this account is truly what happened.
We know that she said that she was told, I guess, by him, Kumar Jagdayo Sr. She walked out on a blizzard and left all her stuff behind and never came back. So that's all we've got so far. Who really knew who he was? So far, everyone says that he was a drunk and a big one at that. But that lady said, oh, he wasn't violent. He was just drunk. But the eerie part about this situation is that
All three of them lived right next to each other. The way they described it is they were basically door to door, like there was a wall in between them. And we have a picture of Roberta blending families. So this was before my dad was born. And so we've asked so many times, you
Your son went out with her and had these outings. You never saw Roberta. And so she would be like, no, like we've never had any interactions. All I've ever seen her was through the window. One time she was putting the kids in the car. They never spoke to each other. It's hard to believe. But I mean, I guess if Kumar...
had his son for the weekend and he was the one doing all the transactions going between the house of getting them and Roberta wasn't involved in any way, then I guess. She told me one time that one of the friends from Trinidad, because I guess there was a little community of Trinidadians in the area. One of the friends had said that they had heard that she was prostituting through word of mouth. And so we kind of get these speculations of maybe
Maybe she was on the street or maybe people were just assuming that because she was with somebody that was kind of in that way of life. And so maybe people were just assuming, but maybe. But she says that she had never heard anything about her besides the one thing of, oh, they thought X, Y, Z about her. But other than that, anything that she's heard has been from me or from my dad.
Since Roberta wasn't reported missing for decades, no one ever documented Kumar Sr.'s version of events. Unfortunately, Kumar Sr. passed away in the 2000s, so it appears that what he may have known is likely lost forever. Which adds to the frustration of trying to piece together what really happened. The only contact that I know of was when they found out that Roberta disappeared.
disappeared. Kumar Sr. was the one to pick up the telephone and call Aunt Jay and say, have you seen Roberta? She left all her things here, but she said that she was going to the store. So that's when Aunt Jay was like, no, haven't seen her.
Let's go to the police if she's missing. That's where the story ends. She says, oh, you know, I went to the police department and I tried to report it and they shook me off that she was old enough to disappear if she wanted to. And then shortly after that, unfortunately, Aunt Jay had a 16, 17 year old son who passed away and then her husband passed away shortly after that. So she says after that, she didn't have any time to worry about her sister because she was mourning her
Her son's death, her husband's death. She was left alone as a single mom to take care of her daughter. From that perspective, it makes me have compassion because her world came crashing down in two years.
Trinity explained that all of this has had a profound impact on her father. He grew up with a certain perception of his life, one that was completely shattered when Trinity began her search. While he no longer feels abandoned, the harsh reality that no one knows what happened to his mother hasn't exactly brought him the closure he had hoped for. In fact, it's left him with even more unanswered questions.
his whole life. He grew up saying that his mom had abandoned him. He didn't know. Her whole story was a mystery. He thought it was just, she walked out and she lived her own life and she didn't want him. And that's huge. And to find out at 40 years old that that wasn't necessarily the truth, I can't imagine how he felt. Was it relief or more anguish? Does
because it really wasn't closure. My dad struggled with this because this is a huge chunk of his life. It's tough for him to come to grips with one, it being in the media. He supports all this and he says he stitched his wound and it's been open, it's been stitched, it's been opened and the whole nine yards. I mean, he lived a very terrible, terrible life. And kudos to him for doing as well as he is now, because I think anyone living with
the burdens that he had. So I'm very proud of him. But being questioned for things that he doesn't remember, it brings about memories that are hard for him. He grew up thinking that his dad was his superhero. As he grew up, he realized that his dad wasn't really doing the right things. And so it's hard to have this picture of your parent. He doesn't want to think that his dad did anything
When we spoke with Trinity again, she shared that she had arranged a meeting between her father and his aunt. She described it as a deeply meaningful moment for him.
He met his aunt. He said all he could do was just think about how she looked just like his mom. And that's all that he could think about while we sat at dinner. He said he just couldn't stop staring at her. So it was a very emotional thing. And the whole thing is very emotional for my dad. But I'm definitely grateful that it has brought our relationship together.
Trinity's father still struggles with many unanswered questions, such as why he ended up in foster care despite having so many relatives nearby. He often wonders how his life may have been different had he been placed with them instead. Today, Trinity is working to get his records released, hoping they might hold some answers that she and her father have been searching for.
I know my dad really wants to get his foster care paperwork because that at least should be able to say what judgment that they were able to place my dad in foster care and without contacting any local family that we know of and that we've been told.
because he did have family members that were 10 minutes away. Knowing that now really crushes my dad because in his eyes, in his heart, he never knew that there was anybody closely related. He didn't know that he had an aunt, an uncle, a grandfather. He didn't know any of this until 2019. And so to find out that they were 10 minutes away from Camden living in Senate Minson and Mount Laurel and all these close towns,
It really hurt him. And the family said that they didn't know what happened to him. They knew he existed. His aunt knew that he existed because she met him as a baby. His aunt and my grandfather came over one time at the house and Roberta showed
Trinity still holds out hope that one day, Roberta's daughter will come around. In the meantime, she continues to send her updates about the ongoing search for Roberta, hoping it will spark a connection.
Her daughter has not messaged us back. I still try to keep in touch with her two to three times per year, maybe send her an update. She will read the messages, which I'm grateful for, but she hasn't said anything back. She did have a relationship with my dad, even though my dad was only seven months at the time. We were able to find a picture of her with my dad, and she was...
six, seven years old at the time. And you would think that growing up, you would yearn to want to find who your brother is or what happened to your brother. Is he still alive? Any of those questions. And she just doesn't seem to be curious or want to know. It's so wild to me that it's not just one question mark of everybody wants to find out what happened to Roberta. We
We've got these siblings that were separated that never reconnected and doesn't seem that they will be connected. We've got the ex-husband that doesn't seem to want to know what happened to the mother of his child. We've got the family members that had essentially no clue what happened to her. There's all these question marks and none of them are being filled.
So what happened to Roberta Michaels Hopkins in February 1981? We know there's a story about her leaving her apartment to purchase cigarettes and stamps during a blizzard, and never returning to the home she shared with the father of her infant son. Roberta's sister recalled that he contacted her, prompting her to try to report Roberta missing, though she says she was met with pushback from law enforcement.
Over the years, a family myth seemed to take shape. A story that Roberta had gone to Florida, possibly with a boyfriend, though there's no evidence to support that story. After Trinity was able to report Roberta missing over four decades after she was last seen, the closest they've been able to get to establishing a date is February 17th, 1981, which is the date that Roberta's last letter to her father was postmarked.
The contents of the letter are telling. Roberta was clearly upset that she was given the wrong address for the venue where her father's wedding was held. Over time, Trinity has come to realize that Roberta's father likely did not approve of her relationship with Kumar Sr., and this may have been the source of the divide within Roberta's family. But no one knows what happened to Roberta after that.
Trinity has been digging away at this mystery, talking to anyone she could find who ever knew Roberta, or those around her. She's been collecting the tiny breadcrumbs people have had to offer her, and she hopes that someday, if she continues to collect enough of those breadcrumbs, the answers will become clear.
If you have any information regarding the disappearance of Roberta Michaels Hopkins, please contact the Cinnaminson Township Police Department at 856-829-6667, extension 2075, or the New Jersey State Police Missing Persons Unit at 609-882-2000, extension 2554.
We've had these hints or these little excitements, or some people would even call them red herrings at one point. We did find a Roberta Hopkins listed in her yearbook with a phone number and a name and a state. And we chased that down and we thought it was her because it was the same age as well. And it turned out to be a red herring and it was a different Roberta and
Whoever made the yearbook had the wrong details and this is kind of where we are at now. I did make a Facebook post asking whoever lives in Ivy Hill Apartments back in 1981 and I had quite success with that. People saying that they lived there, they heard of the name but didn't know her well.
And there's this one lady that I've been trying to get in contact with said that she knew her pretty well. So I am hoping to obtain her contact information and hopefully have more of an update after that. I've been working on this for a while. And I was in a DNA group posting about something else on my family tree. And I just so happened to mention it in a one-line sentence about Roberta. And I can't even tell you how many comments and reactions that got.
I didn't even get my question answered. People's concern and wanting to know more about her story. So then that post turned into an entire story about Roberta, and that had over 600 comments and over 1,000 reactions.
That brings us to the end of episode 476. I'd like to thank everyone who spoke with us for this story. If you have a missing loved one that you'd like to have featured on the show, there's a case submission form at thevanishedpodcast.com. If you'd like to join in on the discussion, there's a page and discussion group on Facebook. You can also find us on Instagram. If you like our show, please give us a five-star rating and review. You can also support the show by contributing on Patreon, where you can get early and ad-free episodes.
Be sure to tune in next week. We'll be covering a case from New York. Thanks for listening. If you like The Vanished, you can listen ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. Prime members can listen ad-free on Amazon Music. Before you go, tell us about yourself by filling out a short survey at wondery.com slash survey.
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