r/UnresolvedMysteries

how does a girl vanish in a 5-minute gap while hiking with 40 classmates? but that’s not even the weirdest part. look at these details from the search logs:

• her jewelry and her favorite comb were actually found being carried by OTHER students back at Bearden High just days after she disappeared. how is this not talked about more??
• tracking dogs followed her scent straight to the paved road at Collins Gap and then the trail just stopped dead. that’s a textbook sign of someone getting into a car.
• an independent searcher found tracks near the spot she left the trail that suggested a 'heavy male smoker' was literally hunkered down waiting in the woods.

the statements from the kids are all over the place too. i'm trying to map out this specific area for a project—it feels like this was an abduction or a setup involving people she knew.

does anyone know if the police ever actually cleared the students who had her jewelry? it feels like such a massive red flag that just got buried.

Video Source:WBIR Appalachian Unsolved - Trenny Gibson

A child found dead in a locked house. The family inside. A detective who named his suspect — and was destroyed for it.

http://theblackarchiveuk.substack.com

On the morning of 29 June 1860, a four-year-old boy named Francis Saville Kent was found dead in a drainage vault in the grounds of Road Hill House, Wiltshire.

He had been suffocated. His throat had been cut.

The house was locked. The family were inside.

The House

Road Hill House stood on the boundary between Wiltshire and Somerset. It was a substantial property, occupied by Samuel Kent — a factory inspector — his second wife Mary, and their children. The household also included children from Samuel Kent’s first marriage, among them a sixteen-year-old daughter named Constance.

The domestic arrangements were, by the standards of the time, irregular. Samuel Kent had begun a relationship with the woman who became his second wife while his first wife was still alive. The first Mrs Kent had died in 1853. Rumours about the circumstances of that household persisted in the local community.

The Incident

Francis, the youngest child of the second marriage, was found missing from his cot in the early morning of 29 June. A search of the grounds located his body in the outdoor privy — an earth closet in the garden. He had been placed there after death. His nightclothes were missing and were never recovered.

The local police investigation was immediate and largely ineffective. The house had been locked from the inside. No clear evidence of an external intruder was found. Suspicion fell, from the outset, on members of the household.

The Detective

In July 1860, Scotland Yard sent Inspector Jonathan Whicher to Road Hill House.

Whicher was, at that point, among the most celebrated detectives in England. He had been involved in significant cases throughout the 1840s and 1850s and was widely regarded as one of the most capable investigators of his generation.

He spent three days at Road Hill House. He examined the evidence systematically. He identified what he considered to be the critical physical evidence: a missing nightgown belonging to Constance Kent, which had been recorded in the laundry list before the murder and could not be accounted for afterward.

On 20 July 1860, Whicher arrested Constance Kent on suspicion of murder.

She was sixteen years old.

The Response

The arrest was not well received.

The public reaction was largely hostile. A police officer arresting a sixteen-year-old girl from a respectable family on the basis of a missing nightgown was not, in the prevailing climate, considered acceptable. The local magistrates discharged Constance Kent for want of evidence. The nightgown was never produced.

Whicher was publicly criticised. His methods were questioned. His reputation, which had been considerable, did not recover. He retired from Scotland Yard within two years.

The case remained officially unsolved.

The Gap

The record between 1860 and 1865 contains no resolution.

Constance Kent was free. The murder of Francis Saville Kent remained an open file. No other suspect was ever seriously investigated. No further charges were brought.

What the record does not contain, for five years, is any explanation of what had happened in Road Hill House on the night of 28 to 29 June 1860.

The Confession

On 25 April 1865, Constance Kent presented herself to Superintendent Williamson of Scotland Yard.

She confessed to the murder of her half-brother Francis.

She stated that she had acted alone. She made no attempt to implicate anyone else. She gave her reasons, to the extent that they can be established from the surviving documentation, as relating to resentment of the second family — her father’s children by his second wife — and specifically of the attention given to the younger children.

She was tried, convicted, and sentenced to death. The sentence was commuted to life imprisonment on account of her age at the time of the offence.

She was released in 1885, having served twenty years. She emigrated to Australia, where she lived under a different name until her death in 1944. She was one hundred years old.

Jonathan Whicher had been correct.

The Record

What the record establishes: Constance Kent murdered Francis Saville Kent on the night of 28 to 29 June 1860. She was convicted on her own confession in 1865. She served twenty years and died in 1944.

What the record does not fully establish: whether she acted entirely alone, as she maintained. Several historians and contemporary investigators noted that the physical logistics of the crime — the movement of the body, the disposal of the nightgown, the management of the locked house — raised questions about whether a sixteen-year-old could have acted without assistance or without anyone in the household being aware of what had occurred.

Those questions were never put to a court. Constance Kent’s confession was accepted. The case was closed.

Jonathan Whicher was right about the suspect. He was professionally destroyed for saying so five years before the evidence confirmed it.

The record contains no formal acknowledgement of this.

sorry everyone, i accidentally got the last one I shared deleted editing in kit's sisters facebook page because she compiles all the info there so resharing this without the link!

esmerelda "kit" mora was just 17 when they went missing from omak, washington where they had just moved recently to live with her biological mother and siblings. kit is latino and indigenous with ancestral ties to the SnPink’tn (Penticton Indian Band). they also identified as non-binary which they had confided in some friends. all of kit's friends described them as a kindhearted teen who enjoyed music and drawing but suffered from anxiety.

a lot of this post is going to include a few people; charlotte (older sister). bonnie and charlie groo (grandparents), amythist (friend), lori (kit's biological mother)

kit was born in 2005 into a household with documented domestic abuse, drug abuse, and alcoholism. their father was in and out of jail. this all lead to them briefly being in a foster home until they were adopted at age 4 by their great grand-grandparents bonnie and charlie groo's who lived in yakima, washington and they were able to adopt her in 2010. kit's mother, had been reported to child protective services a total of 39 times. investigators were able to verify three findings of neglect against her, two of the alleged instances were inconclusive. 

in 2021 kit told their friend (some sources state it's their partner) that she had been talking to her mother "my mom wants me to go see them, like, go see my mom and siblings and meet my siblings,’” amythist recalled kit saying.

amythist and charlotte were both under the impression that this would be a short term visit, like a week so after that had passed they checked in on them to ask how their visit went for them. they informed them that she was going to actually still there. charlotte said that her parents had heard around that time that she planned to start school there. they had just told their grandparents that she was going to assist her art teacher in class and was extremely excited prior to them going missing.

the last time amythist saw kit in person is on their birthday in 2021.

when kit was 17 they would go missing after returning to stay with her biological mother and siblings in omak, washington in 2021, they noticed a shift and felt that something was wrong by the way kit was talking to them, they were growingly concerned that she hadn't called. amythist said her last conversation was november 5, 2021.

charlotte and charlie said that they called the omak police on november 27, 2021 and asked for a wellness check and the police said that they had gone to the house and kit came to the door and advising they were safe and that was all. so they assumed kit was fine. the following months kit got messages from friends and family, the holidays went without a response from them. amythist continued texting through summer 2022 without any response and the messages were never opened.

in september 2022 amythist called charlotte to see if she had been able to get in touch with kit" and they realized neither of them had, kit seemingly had been missing and I can only imagine how scared they felt knowing that everything had just changed from simple no replies to missing persons.

that's when her best friend, amythist, decided to make a 6+ hour round trip drive to try to find them. when they arrived at omak from yakima, there was nothing. not at home, not anywhere she knew kit frequented, even kit's moms store on main street. they found no kit, just found that the shop had been closed for months. after tirelessly searching, amythist went to the police department to ask if they had heard anything about kit. 

the police officer said he would check and he was able to get in touch with kit's mom, lorie, that they had been missing since april and had run away presumably back to yakima. nelson called kit's relatives to tell them all what was happening.

their worst fear was happening.

no one was looking for them. no one had ever known to be looking for them.

kit had never even been reported missing. 

10 months had gone by without anyone hearing from kit, it took over a year for a search to begin.

charlotte said around that same time they had seen photos of kit which was nothing like the typical androgynous look she was accustomed to seeing kit wearing. charlotte described their look as your typical t-shirts, sweats, joggers, jeans, boys shoes, short hair. yet in these photos she was seeing they were wearing prairie gunne sax style prairie dresses with floral prints which was just not how they dressed. asides from physically there there was a significant shift in their behavior as well.

they were reported missing in april 2022, her biological mom notably told them they had not heard from kit for months and that "kit had run away to yakima with some girlfriend" when they were asked. however, november of 2021 was the last time kit's loved ones heard from them, based on records and social media, their disappearance had been withheld for a year. 

it took an additional 3 months for the police to begin investigating after that delaying the search by using what is referred to as the runaway loophole and marking them as a runaway instead of a missing endangered persons case. this can cause many issues but one is where it was used as well to delay the search as the bias of runaways leads to sluggish searches and assumptions that they will return on their own.

as of 2026 they are still missing and their loved ones, friends, and community are looking for answers. everyone failed kit and now we/they need more eyes to try to find them. I want to know concretely what happened so we can end the speculations and they have closure & justice. they have been missing for more than three years.

kit was dropped from her school in early 2022 because they had stopped going to class. under state law before withdrawing kit the district would have needed to have taken steps like conferences with the mother, filing a truancy petition, along with other required meetings for a student to withdraw from school which the school did not do for them.

washington child protective services, omak police department and kit's school had all received signs that the household was potentially unsafe and warned of child neglect/violence in her home. the last place kit was staying, long after anyone had even heard from kit was with her mom, lorie. none of these agencies meant to help protect people from these circumstances happened to checked on kit until months had already passed since she was last seen. based on records and social media, their disappearance had been seemingly concealed for more than a year.

washington is one of the states that has the highest mmiw rates within the states alongside alaska, arizona and new mexico. indigenous folk are 10x more likely to experience violence than non-indigenous women. this is attributed to the disproportionate representation of missing persons/homicide cases, to systemic racism, colonization and socioeconomic changes. there is a widespread issue with mmiw across the country that needs to be addressed on a grand scale. kit was never meant to be a statistic.

charlotte created a “finding kit” page. she organizes vigils, made missing person posters and messaged anyone she could think of with a connection to kit or nelson. every piece of information she she has shared on her facebook.

so what happened to kit? how has it been so long without any updates or probing into the schools, cps, etc. why did it take a year for them to even be looked for?

did they ever actually leave omak?

sources

https://www.opb.org/article/2024/02/18/kit-nelson-mora-missing-indigenous-teen/

https://www.yakimaherald.com/news/topics/the_vanished/kit-mora-who-disappeared-in-2022-would-have-graduated-this-year-reward-for-info-is/article_ff4ee5c2-8099-11ed-a246-bbe145d765ca.html

https://www.missingkids.org/blog/2026/new-image-offers-hope-in-search-for-missing-teen

esmerelda "kit" mora was just 17 when they went missing from omak, washington where she had just moved recently to live with her biological mother and siblings. kit is latino and indigenous with ancestral ties to the SnPink’tn (Penticton Indian Band). they also identified as non-binary which they had confided in friends. her friends described her as a kindhearted kid who enjoyed music and drawing but suffered from anxiety. she had just told her grandparents that she was going to assist her art teacher in class and was extremely excited prior to them going missing.

a lot of this post is going to include a few people; charlotte (older sister). bonnie and charlie groo (grandparents), amythist (friend), lori (kit's biological mother)

kit was born in 2005 into a household with documented domestic abuse, drug abuse, and alcoholism. their father was in and out of jail. this all lead to them briefly being in a foster home until they were adopted at age 4 by their great grand-grandparents bonnie and charlie Groo's who lived in yakima, washington and they were able to adopt her in 2010. kit's mother, had been reported to child protective services a total of 39 times. investigators were able to verify three findings of neglect against her, two of the alleged instances were inconclusive. 

in 2021 kit told their potential partner/friend that she had been talking to her mother "my mom wants me to go see them, like, go see my mom and siblings and meet my siblings,’” amythist recalled kit saying. amythist and charlotte were both under the impression that this would be a short term visit, like a week so after that had passed they checked in on them to ask how their visit went for them. they informed them that she was going to actually still there. charlotte said that her parents had heard around that time that she planned to start school there. 

the last time amythist saw kit in person is on their birthday in 2021. when kit was 17 they would go missing after returning to stay with her biological mother and siblings in omak, washington in 2021, they noticed a shift and felt that something was wrong by the way Kit was talking to them, they were growingly concerned that she hadn't called. amythist said her last conversation was november 5, 2021.

charlotte and charlie said that they called the omak police on november 27, 2021 and asked for a wellness check and the police said that they checked and Kit came to the door and advised she was safe and that was all so they assumed kit was fine. yhe following months kit got messages from friends and family, the holidays went without a response from them. amythist continued texting through summer 2022 without any response and allegeding the messages were never viewed. 

in september 2022 amythist called charlotte to see if she had been able to get in touch with kit" and they realized she had been missing and I can only imagine how scared they felt knowing that everything had just changed from no response to missing. 10 months had gone by without anyone hearing from kit when her best friend, amythist, decided to make a 6+ hour round trip drive to try to find them. when they arrived at omak from yakima, there was nothing. not at home, not anywhere she knew kit frequented, even kit's moms store on main street. they found no kit, just found that the shop had been closed for months. after tirelessly searching, amythist went to the police department to ask if they had heard anything about kit. 

the police officer said he would check and he was able to get in touch with kit's mom, lorie, that she had been missing since april and had run away presumably back to yakima. nelson called kit's relatives to tell them all what was happening.

their worst fear was happening.

no one was looking for them. no one had ever known to be looking for them.

kit had never even been reported missing. 

charlotte said around that same time they had seen photos of them which was nothing like the typical androgynous look she was accustomed to seeing kit wearing, described as your typical t-shirts, sweats, joggers, jeans, boys shoes, short hair. yet in these photos she was wearing prairie gunne sax style dresses with floral prints which is just not how she dresses according to the people around them. there was a significant shift in their behavior as well.

they were reported missing in April 2022, her biological mom notably told them they had not heard from kit for months and that "she had run away to yakima with some girlfriend" when she was asked. however, november of 2021 was the last time kit's loved ones heard from them, based on records and social media, their disappearance had been withheld for a year. 

it took an additional 3 months for the police to begin investigating after that delaying the search by using what is referred to as the runaway loophole and marking her as a runaway instead of a missing endangered persons case. this can cause many issues but one is where it was used as well to delay the search as the bias of runaways leads to sluggish searches and assumptions that they will return on their own.

so what happened to kit? someone has to know what happened.

as of 2026 she is still missing and their loved ones, friends, and community are looking for answers. everyone failed kit and now we/they need more eyes to try to find her. I want to know concretely what happened so we can end the speculations and they have closure & justice. they have been missing for more than three years.

kit was dropped from her school in early 2022 because they had stopped going to class. under state law before withdrawing kit the district would have needed to have taken steps like conferences with the mother, filing a truancy petition, along with other required meetings for a student to withdraw from school which the school did not do for her.

washington child protective services, omak police department and kit's school had all received signs that the household was potentially unsafe and warned of child neglect/violence in her home. the last place Kit was staying, long after anyone had even heard from kit was with her mom, lorie. none of these agencies meant to help protect people from these circumstances happened to checked on kit until months had already passed since she was last seen. based on records and social media, their disappearance had been seemingly concealed for more than a year.

washington is one of the states that has the highest mmiw rates within the states alongside alaska, arizona and new mexico. indigenous folk are 10x more likely to experience violence than non-indigenous women. this is attributed to the disproportionate representation of missing persons/homicide cases, to systemic racism, colonization and socioeconomic changes. there is a widespread issue with mmiw across the country that needs to be addressed on a grand scale. kit was never meant to be a statistic.

sources

https://www.opb.org/article/2024/02/18/kit-nelson-mora-missing-indigenous-teen/

https://www.yakimaherald.com/news/topics/the\_vanished/kit-mora-who-disappeared-in-2022-would-have-graduated-this-year-reward-for-info-is/article\_ff4ee5c2-8099-11ed-a246-bbe145d765ca.html