What Happened to Misty Copsey: Part Two - Not a Runaway

In Part Two of "What Happened to Misty Copsey?," we delve deeper into the mysterious disappearance of 14-year-old Misty Copsey in Puyallup, Washington. While the police labeled her a runaway, the community's search efforts intensified. In this episode, we explore how a persistent and eccentric individual named Cory Bober became a crucial figure in the case. Cory, with an obsession for serial killers and a belief in a pattern of abductions, reached out to Misty's mother, Diana Smith, offering his support and theories about the Green River Killer. As Diana grapples with the devastating possibility of her daughter's abduction, Cory's dedication to uncovering the truth grows. Despite resistance from law enforcement and a series of dramatic developments, Cory and Diana continued their quest for answers, eventually leading to a significant discovery that challenged the initial assumptions about Misty's disappearance.

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Transcript

What Happened to Misty Copsey? a story in 3 parts, this is part two: Not a runaway

[Underscore Music]

Although many people in the Puyallup area were searching for Misty Copsey, all while the police were telling the public she was just another runaway. 

[Theme Music Start]

We dance round in a ring and suppose, but the secret sits in the middle and knows.

[Theme Music Play Out]

[Under Score Music]

The police in Puyallup still had to deal with the eccentric thorn in their side, and that thorn was Cory Bober.  Cory was still obsessed with serial killers, the Green River Killer in particular and one day his mom told him about the missing 14-year-old, Misty Copsey.  If you remember, earlier we spoke about Cory’s obsession and how he uncovered a pattern of girls being murdered in Puyallup exactly 2 years and one month apart and yes, I can hear you all screaming at me, two deaths cannot create a pattern, but now Misty Copsey was gone, during the exact month Cory had predicted and with three girls all taken 2 years and one month apart, Cory knew he was right all along. Next, Cory did something no one was expecting, and he contacted Diana Smith directly and offered the melancholy woman his support and his theories about the Green River Killer. 

Weather Diana wanted this help was irrelevant, because the police had left her high and dry and even purposely told the public to cease and desist with the search for her daughter, Diane would accept help from wherever it materialized. Cory sat with Diana and explained his life’s research and work, he laid bare all of his theories about Randy Achziger and the Green River Killer and he informed Diana that Misty had most likely been abducted and murdered by this man. In this moment Diana’s dreams of reuniting with her daughter, her only child, were shattered. 

Diana had been clinging to hope that Misty would return home, however; Cory’s information seemed likely, and it devastated her deep inside of her core. This did not stop Diana from wanting to uncover the truth about her daughter and she was happy to have a comrade who seemed to be on her side for a change. 

Losing a child, I mean, I cannot even imagine what that would be like, it must be one of the most difficult things a parent can go through. One time while I live in North Carolina as a small child, I got lost walking home from school and the whole community was activated and out searching for me. I know that I was scared, because I was lost, but I knew I was ok, my parents on the other had were scared to death and frantically searching for me. I obviously made it home safe that day, but that memory still sticks with me to this day. Diana was not as lucky as my parents and Misty had still not been found, in any way, dead, alive, safe, injured, nothing; and Diana turned back to a bottle as a means to deal with her overwhelming emotions. Diana remained an ally of Cory’s and his pursuit of justice against Randy Achzinger. Cory contacted good ol’ Sergeant Carver and spoke with him regarding Misty’s case, but Carver continued to dismiss Misty’s case as a runaway. It is funny how everyone’s arguments for everything seems to revolve around keeping children safe, but when a child is in actual danger or missing, no one gives a shit.

During this phone call Carver told Cory that Misty’s case had been transferred to the Pierce County Sheriff's Office and Deputy Coburn was now leading the investigation. As Carver handed the case over, he overloaded Deputy Coburn with his own prejudicial views on the case and made all the details reinforce his own personal point of view, what a jerk. 

Due to Sergeant Carver’s overwhelming prejudicial views about Diana and Cory being transferred to the new agency working the case, Deputy Coburn told Cory Bober that he saw Diana Smith, as a troubled alcoholic with a significant criminal history and he saw Cory Bober as a disruptive member of the public who was simply interfering with law enforcement’s work. At the end of this conversation Deputy Coburn made it clear that even if he were to find Misty’s remains, he would not disclose those whereabouts to either Cory or Diana. This of course fueled the raging fire between Diana and Cory and the law enforcement agencies working the case, and let that sink in for one moment, the Deputy in charge of finding Misty, stated out loud that he would not even tell her grieving mother if he found her remains.  

After being told to their faces that they would not be involved with nor informed about what was happening in Misty’s case, Cory decided to continue his investigation on his own and he continued to investigate the Misty Copsey case and its tie to the Green River Killer case. Cory told the police that he would take his own investigatory information to the media himself if the police did not care to involve him, this was something he had done in the past to great effect. But little did Cory know that the Puyallup police department was not kidding around when the told him to stay away from their case. 

What do we do with meddlesome individuals who refuse to go away, we find a way to extract them from our situation, and this is exactly what the Puyallup Police Department decided to do with Cory Bober. Cory was a small-time drug dealer, and he sold a little weed here and there, something that is legal recreationally in a fifth of the states in our country today. But it was not legal in 1993 and that was when the police decided to set up a drug bust, targeting the thorn in their sides, Cory Bober. When Cory was arrested, he faced a maximum sentence of 4 years in prison, but while he awaited sentencing, he kept digging into the Misty Copsey case, Cory was like a dog with a bone and just a little jail time was not going to deter him.

The next thing the Puyallup police did in their quest to silence Cory Bober, was to get Diana Smith, Misty’s mom, on their side. Both Sergeant Carver and Deputy Coburn met with Diana and they attempted to convince the woman, they had cast dispersions on and cast a side in her own daughter’s missing person’s case, that Cory Bober was the real problem, the enemy. They told Diana that Cory was negatively influencing her and his involvement was hindering the real investigation by police. After this sit down with the police, Diana agreed to file a restraining order against Cory Bober, the only affective way to sever all ties with the man obsessed with her daughter’s disappearance. 

Corey Bober abided by the restraining order and did not contact Diana in any way, but just a fortnight later, Diana decided to drop the restraining order against Cory, she realized that despite Cory’s strange eccentricities, she knew that she needed the support he provided, support she did not feel coming from anyone else around her. Cory had become Diana’s confidant, he listened to her anytime she needed an ear and he would sit on the phone with her for as long as she needed to talk. Cory directed Diana to support groups and other helpful originations to help her through this harrowing time in her life, he was the only person doing these things for her in her time of need, so how bad could he actually be, Diana thought. Once Diana and Cory were back together as a team, they started work on the case again.

The Green River Killer case, which had been cold for some time was reopened and the two murdered girls from Puyallup, Kim Delange and Anna Chebetnoy were now listed in the case file, this fact caused Cory Bober to feel vindicated, you see he was correct all along, he thought, and he believed that Misty was the third in the pattern he had discovered relating to the Green River Killings in Puyallup. Police had not added Misty’s name to the Green River Killer victim list, but Cory was convinced he was correct.

The two women added to the Green River Killer’s victim list had been discovered just off of Highway 401 near mile marker 30 and that was where Cory believed they would discover Misty’s remains as well. On November 28th, 1992 Cory and Diana organized and executed a search party consisting of 25 volunteers, they would search the north side of highway 401, where the previous 2 bodies had been located. The group spent many hours searching but, in the end, they came up with nothing. Cory, however; was not one to give up early and throughout November he continued to organize search parties who would spend the weekends scouring through the woods on the side of highway 401 looking for any signs of the missing Misty Copsey.

The first major change in the case came on December 2nd, 1993 when the Pierce County Sherriff’s Office changed the status of Misty’s case from runaway to, missing under suspicious circumstances. This provided Diana with a sliver of hope and it fueled the fire within Cory to solve this case himself. Cory remained convinced that Misty’s remains would be found somewhere along Highway 401, because the Green River Killer always dumped his victims in groupings. Cory contacted the King County Medical Examiner’s office several times in his efforts to pin point the exact location where the previous two girls had been found along highway 401, after pestering the office enough they finally provided him with the exact location where the remains had been discovered and this discovery rocked Cory.  The two victims had been found on the South side of 401, not the north side. All of the search parties and organized events had happened on the opposite side of the highway, no wonder they had never discovered anything during their searches.

Diana’s fear grew the longer Misty was gone, it had now been three months since she last saw her daughter and Diana was growing desperate. One day Diana ran into Rheuban Schmidt at the local grocer and she confronted him about Misty’s disappearance, Rheuban’s response to this situation was to run away without speaking to Diana, this exacerbated Diana’s thoughts that Rheuban was somehow involved.

In any true crime case, especially missing person cases, things always get tough around the holidays. Holidays and family traditions seem improper during a time that your loved one is still missing, and this was the case for Diana as well. As Christmas neared, with no signs of Misty ever coming home again, Diana grappled with her emotions and the emotions were winning the fight. Diana took a combination of alcohol mixed with antidepressants in an attempt to take her own life, luckily this attempt failed and Diana woke up in the hospital, after some time recovering, Diana returned to her house and started facing the challenges in her life once again.

In January of 1993, Diana made an appearance on KOMO, the local ABC affiliate, she was accompanied by Trena Brevard, Misty’s best friend, and King County Detective Jim Doyon, Detective Doyon had investigated the Green River Killer and the murder of the two Puyallup girls found along Highway 401.

During this broadcast, they opened the phone lines so the public could call in tips or clues in the case. One person called in and claimed that they saw Misty walking down a street called Meridian, this is the main road in Puyallup that passes by the fairgrounds, this caller said they witnessed Misty going to the nearby 7-11 gas station. This caller stated that they had seen Misty around 10 pm, making this, if true, the last known sighting of Misty Copsey on the night she vanished. This woman did not give her name and she has never come forward with information about this case again. Another interesting twist about this caller is that the television footage of this segment has been lost to time, neither Cory, Diana, nor the KOMO network has a copy of the footage when this caller called the station and gave their statement.

The day after the TV interview, Detective Doyon traveled out to Highway 401 and he observed the dumping grounds of the first two girls who had been located. Detective Doyon had no jurisdiction here, so this was merely symbolic, but it made Diana feel better that someone cared enough to help. 

[Music Change – Separate Plot Point]

On January 10th, 1993, just 4 months after Misty’s disappearance, the town of Puyallup was rocked by anther crime that reeked of similarity to what some believed may have happened to Misty Copsey. Just 5 blocks from the area Misty had gone missing from and on the same road the anonymous TV caller had claimed to have seen Misty on, a 15-year-old girl was walking down the street when she was taken. A red Camaro pulled up to the young girl as she was walking down Meridian in downtown Puyallup. The man inside of the car, Robert Leslie Hickey, then began to call out to the girl. She ignored the man and continued on her way, then Robert began shouting graphic things at the girl and he began asking her for sexual favors, the girl just continued walking. Robert pulled over and jumped out of his red Camaro, he forced the girl into his car and drove her to a nearby secluded area. Robert raped this girl and then drover her to a nearby ravine, where he proceeded to throw her over the edge, convinced that the fall would kill the girl. This is very similar to the actions of Lawrence Singleton in the Mary Vincent case, which we covered during Season one of The Secret Sits. And just like Mary Vincent, this girl was a bad ass survivor.  The girl survived the fall down the ravine and she later identified Robert Hickey as her attacker.  He was convicted of first-degree rape and he received a total of 7 years in prison for this rape and attempted murder. Robert Hickey was never listed on the suspect list for Misty Copsey, even after this attack, police never even interviewed him as a potential suspect. After serving 5 years of his sentence, he was released on parole, where he would go on to do the same thing to another woman.

[Back to Story]

Cory was still focused on Misty’s case and he could not help but wonder what he was doing wrong, how had he come up with nothing in relation to Misty’s disappearance? Cory knew he was on the correct path and he needed to just keep doing what he was doing. On February 7th, 1993 Cory and Diana organized another search party, this time they would be searching in the thick forest on the south side of Highway 401. Leading up to this search Cory had been investigating the whereabouts of Randy Achziger on the night of Misty’s disappearance. What he found was that on the night of September 17th, Randy had been at the Puyallup Good Samaritan Hospital, which is located very close to the fairgrounds, Randy was at the hospital as moral support for his sister who was in labor. Now to some, this might seem like an alibi, but to Cory Bober, this just meant that Randy was within striking distance of Misty on that night. Cory shared information about the upcoming search with a local new reporter and this reported published an article that did drum up support for this new search. Cory and Diana along with a group of friends, family, and community members met on the south side of Highway 401 near mile marker 30 and they began to search.

As the group scoured the forest on the side of the highway, one searcher found the most significant clue in the case so far, and it put to rest any rumors that Misty Copsey was just another runaway.

Join me next week for the conclusion of this case and discover if we ever find out what happened to Misty Copsey. We dance round in a ring and suppose, but the secret sits in the middle and knows.

Sources: 

Misty Donna Copsey – The Charley Project. (n.d.). https://charleyproject.org/case/misty-donna-copsey

Vanished: 27 years since Misty Copsey, 14, last seen in Puyallup. (2019, November 23). KIRO 7 News Seattle. https://www.kiro7.com/news/south-sound-news/vanished-27-years-since-misty-copsey-14-last-seen-in-puyallup/987369410/

F. (2021, January 5). Misty Donna Copsey. The Resource Center for Cold Case Missing Children’s Cases. https://rcccmcc.com/2020/04/15/misty-donna-copsey/

A roster of possible suspects in the Misty Copsey case. (2012, December 28). Tacoma News Tribune. https://www.thenewstribune.com/news/special-reports/article25859446.html

The Stolen Child: Part I. (2015, June 30). Tacoma News Tribune. https://www.thenewstribune.com/news/special-reports/article25857745.html

The Stolen Child: Part II. (2015, June 30). Tacoma News Tribune. https://www.thenewstribune.com/news/special-reports/article25857751.html

The Stolen Child: Part III. (2015, June 30). Tacoma News Tribune. https://www.thenewstribune.com/news/special-reports/article25857754.html

Loose ends / FAQ. (2012, December 28). Tacoma News Tribune. https://www.thenewstribune.com/news/special-reports/article25857760.html

Harthorne, M. (2013, December 27). Police seek photos from 1992 Puyallup Fair to crack cold case. KOMO. https://komonews.com/news/local/police-seek-photos-from-1992-puyallup-fair-to-crack-cold-case

DNA could solve Misty Copsey’s 1992 disappearance, death. (2013, March 6). KOMO. https://komonews.com/archive/dna-could-solve-misty-copseys-1992-disappearance-death

AOL is part of the Yahoo family of brands. (2013, December 29). https://www.aol.com/article/2013/12/29/police-reopen-cold-case-after-21-years/20796975/

Puyallup, Washington. (2023, August 31). Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puyallup,_Washington

The Green River Killer. (2021, November 10). Apple Podcasts. https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-green-river-killer/id1565343439?i=1000541453209

Kidnapped Mary Vincent. (2021, April 29). Spotify. https://open.spotify.com/episode/5xd1st15lswMawoC1BoVEK