MISSING: Rachel Good

Written By M Diaries

Ask any parent about their children and what parenthood has meant for their lives, and you’re bound to hear extremely similar stories; effusive expressions of joy and gratitude and love. Becoming a mom or a dad pays off in emotional dividends that would have seemed unimaginable—even cliché—beforehand. When your child is born, you spend the rest of your life living vicariously through theirs. It’s a one-of-a-kind experience and a bond like no other.

But parenthood comes with a price few people tell you about: An immense spectrum of worry that can feel overwhelming at times. The apprehension can range from miniscule to immense. Existential to downright irrational. We worry about their health, their future, their academic performance, their social development, what music they listen to, what shows they watch, who they hang out with, what they’re seeing on the internet, and on and on. You name it, a parent has lost sleep over it.

And then there are things no mom or dad want to think about. These nightmare scenarios we try to push out of our mind can be unfathomably dark: The predator living in plain sight. The car-wreck call in the middle of the night. The school shooting we never see coming. And even worse, a child gone missing, disappearing into the deep and dark void of an unsolved crime. For Cary and Brenda Good, this kind of nightmare became a stone-cold reality in 2003, when they learned their twenty-year-old daughter, Rachel Good, had vanished into thin air.

Very outgoing, and maybe a little naïve, Rachel was a young woman who loved her family, despite a homelife that had broken in two at an early and impressionable age. Rachel was full of laughter and almost never without a smile on her lips. She spoke often of having a big, happy family of her own one day. But in an instant, on a crisp October night more than twenty years ago … she was gone without a trace.

So, what happened to Rachel? Did it have anything to do with the strange and complicated relationship she’d found herself swept up in at the time of her disappearance? The mystery of what happened to her still looms. And the shocking clues her family uncovered after she was gone keep them yearning for the justice that Rachel Good deserves.

Photo of Rachel

Photo of Rachel

Newspaper clipping from candlelight memorial service

 

If you have any information about the disappearance of Rachel Nicole Good, tips can be submitted anonymously to Special Agent Chris Depoy at 540-829-7400.

 
 

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UNSOLVED: Kimberly Sue Morse