Susan Nunez: The Life of the Party

“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 Milwaukee Police Department on Oct. 13, 2004. She had last been seen at her home on Aug. 15, 2004, the morning of her 38th birthday. According to Milwaukee police reports, which Media Milwaukee obtained through an open records request, she had been living in a duplex with her three teenage sons and her grandmother on Milwaukee’s south side, just a few blocks west of the Walker’s Point neighborhood. 

But why did she disappear? Why did she leave her three sons behind, without telling a single member of her family where she was going? Her sister told the police that the morning of August 15 was like any other morning for Susan. She woke up, took a bath, got dressed, and walked out of the house – nothing out of the ordinary at all. She even left most of her belongings behind.

“We were gonna go play basketball, and then she ran out the house,” said Niko. “That’s the last time we all seen her. I was 14, so I remember all that.”

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 in the city. Each year in the past decade, between 2,500 and 3,300 people have been reported missing each year. Many are short-term missing cases where people are quickly found, highlighting a crisis of online grooming, group home runaways, and other issues. Stereotypical stranger abductions are exceptionally rare, and those are the ones that tend to be highlighted in the news. 

 A team of 12 student journalists spent three months investigating 18 open missing people cases, most of them people of color in Milwaukee but several from smaller Wisconsin cities. The students spoke with family members and detectives and filed open records requests.  In the case of Susan Nunez, Milwaukee police declined to answer specific questions on the case, but they did release the full police file to Media Milwaukee after an open records request.

The information that follows comes from the police reports.

Susan Nunez was a known figure in her neighborhood. Less than two weeks after her disappearance, police conducted a survey of pedestrians on a street near her house – according to Nunez’s police file, a local woman described her as an alleged drug addict and prostitute, seen around the neighborhood with different men.

Nunez had previously been married to a man with whom she had her three sons. They separated at some point prior to her disappearance, but it’s unknown exactly when or why they split up. At the time, she had been seeing another man who will be referred to as “J” since he has never been arrested nor publicly accused in the case.

He wasn’t into drugs, but he did have a troublesome record. Nunez’s family wasn’t able to make contact with him in the months following her disappearance, and it almost seemed as if he had tried to distance himself from the case altogether.

When Media Milwaukee asked Niko if he had an idea of why Susan disappeared, he was frank with us. “I don’t got an idea, I know what happened. She got into drugs.”

Crack cocaine was largely introduced to urban, inner-city neighborhoods starting during the Reagan administration in the 1980s. Nunez was one of many victims of this epidemic, which disproportionately affected African-American and Latin communities across the country. 

Nunez’ loved ones were well aware of her addiction, and they also knew that she would frequent several taverns in the area to buy cocaine. At a certain point prior to her disappearance, many family members who were interviewed by the police noted her declining appearance and hygiene. She reportedly looked thin and sickly, and some said that they saw her battered and bruised in the weeks leading up to the day that she left.

August 15, 2004, was the day that Susan Nunez walked away from her home and her family, but it wasn’t the last time that anyone saw her. In 2005, reports from family members that she had been spotted at local “crack houses” began to roll in. Niko told me that she had also been spotted with a black eye and her hair cut short. The same year, a security guard at a Walker’s Point restaurant told police that he saw Susan Nunez walk in with two heavy-set, African-American men. She looked physically unwell, and the men allegedly attempted to intimidate the bouncer when he tried to talk to Nunez. 

Those two men were later identified, but their names will be redacted for the privacy of all involved. She would allegedly continue to be spotted around the neighborhood with both men for several years to come. The first man was on the run from the police following a parole violation. The second man was a disabled Vietnam veteran and had a lengthy arrest record. Both of them lived in a property right next to Nunez’s grandmother’s house, and the second suspect had been evicted just weeks before Nunez disappeared. Niko identified the second suspect as one of Nunez’s alleged drug suppliers, and referred to him as an alleged “pimp.”

Niko believes that Susan’s disappearance was premeditated. “She told my dad that she took care of the kids for a long time, so it’s his turn. She wanted to go away.” Niko said that she could never hold down a job in Milwaukee, and that she would also regularly talk about wanting to move back to her home state of Texas. It seemed like she wanted to leave her life in Wisconsin behind.

In the years following the Nunez case, her ex-boyfriend “J” couldn’t stay out of legal trouble. He was arrested several times for sexual assault and disorderly conduct, and the police couldn’t get him to give a proper statement until five years later in 2009. He told the police that shortly before Susan went missing, she had observed him flirting with another woman at a bar. She allegedly went back to their shared home and told their roommate that neither of them would ever see her again, before grabbing some belongings and promptly leaving. Surely enough, “J” told police that was the last time that he had ever seen her, police reports reveal.

During their time together, the two had a troubled relationship – in the summer of 2004, “J” was arrested after a domestic dispute with Nunez and spent a few months in jail. When he was released, he reportedly came home to find that Nunez had been evicted from their house because she couldn’t make the rent. She had moved in with her grandmother, taking her sons with her. “J” told the police that he had been aware of her drug use, and that he wanted nothing to do with it. 

According to her police file, Nunez had another ex-boyfriend known locally by a nickname. We will call him “P.” Some of Nunez’s family members believe that he went by the same name as “J”, and that he was a drug dealer. One of Nunez’s cousins allegedly saw “P” near the auto repair shop that he works at, in late 2007 or early 2008. “P” told Nunez’s cousin that he had reportedly been receiving phone calls from Susan on a regular basis. Police went to the auto repair shop in hopes of talking to “P” – employees there told them that no “P” or “J” works there.

Little progress has been made on Nunez’ case since 2010, just around when police lost track of “J” – he had reportedly been living in the basement of an apartment complex, and the other residents had not seen him for about a year. He hasn’t been formally named as a suspect; nor as “P.”

Niko described recent police efforts to Media Milwaukee as repetitive and futile. “Every time we move, detectives find out we move, and they keep trying to get information,” Niko told me. “They not gonna find her. I told ‘em, ‘Stop trying to waste time saying the same thing. Go look for her.’ It’s a waste of time.” He made it clear, and stated matter-of-factly: he believes that Susan is dead.

Media Milwaukee asked Niko if the police have been working with his family. “No, they haven’t. And I understand, she of age, so they ain’t gonna go look for her like they would for a little kid.” He said the last time that the MPD contacted the family was in 2018. It should be noted that the MPD’s Sensitive Crimes Department has been routinely understaffed and overworked – there is a single detective assignment to approximately 500 open missing persons cases at any given time – but has been willing to cooperate with student journalists in their efforts.

There have been a few oddities of note surrounding Nunez’s case. When her family began to hang up ‘missing’ posters around their neighborhood in August 2004, Nunez’s sister-in-law allegedly received a phone call from an anonymous Hispanic man. He said that Nunez was still alive, and that he knew where she was. Reportedly, nothing else ever resulted from this call. Her grandmother also told the police that she started to get calls around this time – but she described the voice as an African-American male, about 50 years of age. He would repeatedly ask to speak to Susan.

“Growing up, she liked to play jacks,” said Niko. “You know what jacks is, with the ball?”

Susan Nunez had a tragic life, but it wasn’t without its highlights. She was a single mother who would do anything to provide for her sons. Niko remembers her cooking. 

“We’d come home from school; she’d cook food for us. She was a fast learner. She learned how to make Mexican food,” said Nunez. “She learned how to cook Cuban food, so she would make white rice, with black beans. She’d make tamales from scratch. Even though she didn’t have that much money, she’d make stuff happen.”

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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.