Special Projects

For Victor Huyke, owner and president of El Conquistador Latino Newspaper, missing people became personal for him. “One of my friends growing up, Richard Guerrero, eventually it was found out that he was” a victim of serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer, Huyke said. “So many years later, Marty Guerrero, Richard’s brother, is missing,” Huyke added. “There […]

This story is part of a semester-long investigative reporting project into missing people’s cases in Milwaukee and Wisconsin. It was created by an advanced reporting class in the Journalism, Advertising, and Media Studies program at UW-Milwaukee. Other stories from the project are available here.

On Nov. 12, 2021, Mensah Bonman was expecting a birthday call from his 24-year-old son Javeoni Buford, who always called him on his birthday. Javeoni never called, and that signaled to Bonman that something was up. He would receive a call from Javeoni’s maternal brother several days later, who told him that Javeoni had not […]

In Media Milwaukee’s attempts to get in contact with the Johnnie Patterson family, a student journalist called over 100 phone numbers without an answer. Soon after Carrie Davis, Patterson’s daughter, called back and agreed to do an interview.  When the team of student journalists arrived at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee’s Golda Meir Library on the […]

The sun blazed down on a hot August morning in Milwaukee. Temperatures reached their highest of 1975 just the day after, made to feel even hotter just miles away from Milwaukee’s industrial corridor on the city’s west side. Under the covered porch of a white two-story duplex, sat Dontray Hunter, just 23 days from his […]

About 32,711 people have gone missing in the City of Milwaukee in the last 10 years, according to the Milwaukee Police Department. At any given time, about 500 people are actively missing in Milwaukee. Many are people of color, yet very few make the news. In 2024 through Oct. 15, 2,466 people were reported missing […]

“She was outgoing, she was a hard worker, she put her kids first.” Niko Nunez was only 14 when his mother, Susan Nunez, disappeared from her house in Milwaukee. “She was the life of the party for the holidays; she made everybody happy,” Niko told Media Milwaukee. Susan D. Nunez was reported missing to the […]

On Tuesday, June 28, 2022, at 12:45 p.m., Tanesha L. Howard, the mother of Joniah Walker, 15, walked into a Milwaukee police district station to update authorities on information regarding her missing daughter. Joniah’s family said there were cameras and that Walker was observed on a Ring camera. She was last seen walking away from […]

This is the story of a teenage girl, described as exceptionally intelligent, who left her Milwaukee home in her brother’s clothes. She turned the corner on a Ring camera and was never seen again. Joniah Walker went missing on June 23, 2022; she was only 15-years-old at the time. Joniah was a sophomore at Riverside […]

In the City of Milwaukee, at any given time there are 500 open missing person cases in Officer Jamie Sromalla’s caseload. Since becoming a police officer seven years ago, Sromalla came into the Sensitive Crime Unit in July of 2024, and ever since than she’s made an effort to help families of missing persons. “This position […]

What began as neighborhood cleanups quickly transformed into a role as an award-winning radio host and “the most requested advocate in the state of Wisconsin.” Tory Lowe magnifies community voices whose loved ones go missing and uses his platform to help find them. The story of the man inside the community and behind the microphone. […]

Carvell Jennings could fix anything, especially when it came to cars. This was something he made sure to instill in his only daughter, Ebony Jennings. He taught her how to change her own tires and check her own oil. As Ebony grew up on Hampton Avenue in Milwaukee, her dad was known as the neighborhood […]