Where Is Joniah Walker? Part 1

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 High School, described by her mother as a determined teenager.

One of about 2,500 to 3,000 people who go missing in Milwaukee each year, Joniah stands out for several reasons. Unlike most, the days turned into years, and she wasn’t found. For another, she’s a juvenile who, unlike Alexis Patterson, Kristin Smart, or Elijah Vue, didn’t become a major news story, although there’s been a little coverage.  She’s part of a troubling pattern in which people of color or in underprivileged communities don’t get equal news courage.

The police investigation is ongoing. Milwaukee police declined to comment on the case, but they did provide the full police file through an open records request and spoke about how they conduct investigations. The case is now in the hands of the FBI.

Joniah’s mom believes the answers to her daughter’s disappearance likely lie in the darkest reaches of the online underground.

“She was definitely groomed and lured away,” believes Joniah’s mom, Tanesha Howard, who sat down with Media Milwaukee.

The police file documents that Joniah had developed quite an online alter ego including websites that shouldn’t have allowed a juvenile and doomsday YouTube videos. She was also communicating with older men online and had declared that she loved one, the mom said. In addition, the mother verified, she worked at the Pizza Shuttle with Sade Robinson, a Milwaukee woman who was murdered and whose body parts were discarded throughout the city. A man Robinson met online, Maxwell Anderson, is accused in that death. Howard confirmed that Joniah’s family also knew Robinson and family for years.

In addition, Howard says that she received odd emails sent to an account that only Joniah would know shortly after her disappearance. Then they stopped coming. They were routed through a website that makes it impossible to trace the author’s location.

Joniah’s mom says her daughter was so bright that she was walking and talking by first year of her life.

“Lots of memories of her, of course, but like, just to show y’all like how intelligent she is, even when she was an infant, she was born in 2007, right? Tell me why my baby was walking and talking in 2007?” said Howard.

Joniah’s older sister, Mackenzie Thompson, also said Joniah was smart.

“She was talking before she was one, and she had a real conversation,” said Thompson.

Howard recalled a day when Joniah was “like six months out” and asking if she could get down.

“I’m like, you can’t walk. No, no, no. She could talk. She was like 6 months old. And she just slid down and walked away,” according to Howard.

And walk away she has.

The Dark Web

Before going missing, Joniah Walker showed her mom a picture of a white man “maybe a year prior to the disappearance,” according to Howard.

“She just kept saying, mom, isn’t he cute?” according to Howard. “And I kept saying no.”

Howard mentioned that she had a feeling something was going on but “couldn’t put [her] finger on it.”

Howard’s kids told her that she was just being paranoid, according to Howard. At the time, it was just her, Joniah, and her son living there.

“My other kids, I would always tell them, come over and check on Joniah,” said Howard. “Make sure she’s not home alone.  I just feel like somebody’s watching her.”

She then said, “I guess this is what they call mother’s intuition.”

“I really felt like somebody was watching her,” said Howard. “And I said to them (her other kids), ‘Just don’t let her walk her dog by herself.’”

The teen was talking to someone online, the mother believes now.

“And how I know is the things that she said up to her leaving, like, oh, like being emancipated,” said Howard. “I’m like, why do you need to be emancipated?”

Joniah also got her own debit card and checking account because her mom said she didn’t give her a reason not to trust her.

One day Joniah was sitting on a box she had ordered online and didn’t want to show her mom, Howard said. Howard told Joniah that she was going to look in the box if she didn’t tell her what was in it, so Joniah told Howard it was a book bag.

“I’m like, what is in this box, girl?” Howard said. “And she would never tell me what was in the box.”

“She said, because the next time we go camping, I’ll have a bag big enough to put everything in,” said Howard. “I believed it because that’s what we did.”

When Joniah said this, Howard said it was a good idea and asked why she didn’t get her a bag too.

“She was like, ‘You better get your own bag,’” said Howard. “Like she played it off so well.”

Howard mentioned that she never saw the bag in person and mentioned Joniah got it on Amazon months prior to going missing.

“I still have that box upstairs. It was a huge box,” said Howard. “You know, I try to give them their privacy because she never gave me trouble.”

“Yeah, the last time I saw her was that morning before I went to work, and she was different,” said Howard. “I tried to go in her room and kiss her.”

A Missing Person’s Report

Howard reached out to the FBI after Joniah went missing and said she was in “panic mode,” saying they weren’t listening at first.”

“So one day, I was like, okay, you’re going to call these people, and you’re going to talk calmly, and they’re going to listen,” said Howard

“So I talked calmly, and the lady, or the guy, I think this was the guy, he took down my report,” said Howard. “Then the FBI came in two days to the apartment. But it took me quite a week or two to initially get through.”

Howard also mentioned she went to the police station and said her child was missing. They asked her how old she was, and she said 15. 

“Oh, well, she’s not a child, she’s a teenager,” she says an officer told her. “The same officer, he was getting sarcastic with me over the days,” said Howard.

She told officers that she believed her child was being groomed online.

“He would say little things like, oh, I wish I could put on a cape and come out there and help you find Joniah,” said Howard. “But unfortunately, I can’t because I’m stuck behind a desk.” 

She mentioned that the officer was very sarcastic and that she reached out to the captain “because he kept telling [Howard] he didn’t have time to prioritize Joniah’s case.”

“I’m like, what do you have time for? Why are you here? Why are you even the lead person on this if you don’t have time?” Howard said. “Because time is everything. My daughter’s been missing for over three weeks, and you’ve done nothing.” (In Part 2, Media Milwaukee explores what the police reports say).

Joniah trusted someone online, and she was groomed and lured away, according to Howard.

“It was not like, I’m going to run away from home and be this adventurous person, like, in a storyline,” said Howard. “No, I really believe that she was groomed.”

Joniah wasn’t the type to just trust anyone, according to Howard, leading her to believe she was talking to them for quite some time.

Howard said she went to the neighbors to pull up their door cam to see if they saw her and that’s how she got the footage. She then shared it with the National Missing and Exploited Children.

“The police were so upset with me,” said Howard. “They were like, you called National Missing and Exploited Children. I’m like, yeah, she’s been missing for two weeks. Like, you guys are doing nothing.” 

Joniah’s older sister, Mackenzie Thompson, mentioned an observation she made about the video.

“You had to really slow it down to see her leave, because it was like she was a cheetah or something,” said Thompson. “It was like she had to go meet somebody.” 

Who Is Joniah Walker?

Howard had COVID and mentioned Joniah was the only one to take care of her and that it was really bad.

“I didn’t realize she knew how to drive. So she was driving me to my doctor’s appointment and things of that nature. I remember they told me, like, she’s so smart,” said Howard.

She missed a lot of school during that time, but she didn’t fail any of her classes, according to Howard.

“That just shows you, she’s very determined, [a] very smart individual,” said Howard.

Joniah also showed an interest in babysitting and Howard “assumed” this was because Howard had a granddaughter and grandson who both came in 2019; they’re both 5 now.

“She wanted to learn how to babysit children,” according to Howard. “She wanted to be a professional babysitter.”

She was also called a “loyal friend” but reserved by Howard/

“She’s always asking me, ‘Mom, how are you able to talk to people, like make friends so fast like that?’” said Howard. “You’re just so good with talking to people. 

Howard said Joniah had an introverted personality and mentioned that she “struggled with that,” regarding making friends.

Howard mentioned that “maybe a couple weeks before” Joniah went missing, Joniah asked her how she would feel if she never saw her again.

“She’s always been that type of person, like inquisitive, ” said Howard. “Like when she was a small child, she’ll come to me just randomly.”

Three Years Pass

It’s been almost three years and Thompson feels like somebody should’ve seen her. She said the only person who did was a man across the street who no longer lives there and another man in the building that day.

“The first man saw her walking the dog early that day when she had her dress on, and the other man seen how she had that book bag on,” said Thompson.

The man who saw her with the bookbag on said she was in a rush, walking really fast.

“But when she turned the corner, she kind of [kept] her pace down,” said Thompson.

Joniah was wearing her brother’s clothes in the video too, clothes she did not typically wear.

“Planned. Planned. She was manipulated,” said Howard. “It was planned out, well thought out.”

Thompson shared her thoughts, too.

“I feel like somebody probably encouraged my sister to leave her home and take her,” said Thompson.

Another time, a police officer told Howard that they “can’t deal with this right now.”

“We have a homicide,” said Howard. “We have a body, and I told them, ‘Well, at least, you know where the body is.’” 

Howard was told that they couldn’t “prioritize” because they had hundreds of missing persons cases.

“He pointed to a file having it, and that just sent me in a spiral,” said Howard.

Jonathan, Joniah’s father, mentioned in the police report that, after a year, Joniah’s phone wasn’t used. Howard says he turned it off.

“He couldn’t afford it,” said Howard. ”I’m like, dude, that’s the only way we could maybe have found out kid.”

Howard mentioned that they couldn’t monitor Joniah’s data usage because of the way she used “apps and Wi-Fi,” mentioning again that Joniah is “very smart.”

“Her data usage was going through these weird apps due to WiFi. It wasn’t coming through her cell phone,” Thompson said. “She deleted everything. Like the FBI really [wasn’t] able to trace who was talking to her.”

Howard “feels” like Joniah’s alive and that someone knows where she is and is “maybe” holding her against her will.

“Maybe she wants to leave now,” said Howard.

Howard’s grandkids have been asking about Joniah.

“Like when she went missing, my grandkids were only two, and they’re both five now, and they both remember,” said Howard. “They get so angry like, what do you mean you don’t know? She at work? Like they’re getting smarter now,” said Howard.

Joniah’s data wasn’t showing anything and that’s what they were monitoring.

“I wasn’t trying to break into her phone and figure it out, because, like I said, her data on her phone was what we were watching, and it didn’t show anything,” said Howard.

Joniah got her phone “like in 2021” from her dad, and the iPad “when she was about 11,” according to her mom. Howard now has her iPad.

Howard doesn’t believe Joniah’s dad did anything to her.

“He’s not a perfect person. Who is?” said Howard. “But at the end of the day, did he do something to Joniah? No.” 

Joniah was supposed to get her work permit that day and her dad was going to pick her up after work at 3:30.

“By the time he got there, she wasn’t answering her phone and he called me,” said Howard. “Crybaby’s not answering her phone, and I immediately knew something was wrong because that’s not like her. She always answered.”

One day when Joniah was at her dad’s house, Howard said her dad got into it.

“He seen her text, ‘I love you’ to someone, and there was a white guy on the screen, and he snatched the iPad from her and tried to figure out what it was, but she wouldn’t put the code in,” said Howard.

Howard said he had a slightly reddish beard and no glasses.

Thompson thought the man was older.

“I don’t think twenties. I think a 30-year-old man that knows his way in life and is not confused about anything,” said Thompson.

Howard also said the dad didn’t want her to give Joniah the iPad because she was talking to strangers online. 

“I swear, I wish I just smashed the iPad,” said Howard.

Joniah’s mom also had a message for her daughter.

“Girl, come home. I love you. We miss you. We are concerned about you.” I’m still in the same space,” said Howard.

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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.