A new season of the true crime podcast florida criminal tells the story of a 15-year-old Florida girl who goes missing after a mysterious two-hour hike in the early morning of May 20, 2017.
Clues lead Sophie Reeder’s family and detectives to a horrifying conclusion.
When investigative reporters dive into Sophie’s case, it leads them to another one just like it. Then another, and another. They appear in the world of child sex trafficking, where thousands of vulnerable girls across the country fall prey to dangerous and violent predators. Traffickers who see these girls as merchandise for profit and kill if they don’t cooperate.
This six-episode investigation tells their terrifying stories and exposes the failings of law enforcement, courts and support services that are supposed to keep children safe. Yet every day, all around us, girls like Sophie Reeder are stolen and often never found.
Listen to the trailer for Season 3: Girlfriend Sold:
Episodes 1 and 2 are available now, with new episodes every Monday through March.
listen in FeloniousFlorida.com or on these platforms: Apple Podcasts | marvelous | amazon music | Spotify | cast box | stapler | Google Podcasts.
When 15-year-old Sophie Reeder goes missing from her Florida home, it at first seems like she’s run away. But clues begin to emerge that something terrible has happened to Sophie. Then more cases emerge, exposing a violent world that draws in girls like Sophie and destroys their lives, or leaves them dead and often forgotten. The mystery of Sophie Reeder’s fate hinges on one thing: if anyone knows what happened to her, why hasn’t she come forward? Listen now.
No one knows when 16-year-old Marina Ralph entered room 334 of an Extended Stay hotel in Florida, or what happened to her while she was there. What we do know is that Marina was terrified of something. The only person who might have known what happened to her was a friend she met at school, but now both girls are dead. Listen now.
Shanika Ampah was a gifted child from a home with two loving parents. But a horrible tragedy struck and she, at just 11 years old, was lured by predators and taken out on the road to be sold as a product of a tractor-trailer. For seven years, she endured the horror that no girl should endure, until one day, when she takes a break. Listen now.
A 13-year-old girl disappears from her mother’s apartment to return a week later beaten, raped and with a rose tattooed on her neck. She barely escaped the ordeal from her. But within hours, the police have her in handcuffs: she is under arrest for crimes that her captors forced her to commit. Listen now..
A staff mentor at a group foster home lures two teenage residents to sell them for sex in hotel rooms from the Florida Keys to Tampa. A car crash in the middle of the night offers what may be their only chance to escape, but their captor isn’t done with them yet. Listen on March 20.
William Foster goes from pimping his high school sweetheart to building one of the largest trafficking empires in Florida. His fortune comes from dozens of girls, some of them minors, who strip and sell themselves for sex. But a monster hurricane off the Florida coast would threaten to topple everything. In addition, the search for Sophie Reeder intensifies. Listen on March 27.
There have been a few updates to the cases featured in Season 3 of Felonious Florida: Innocence Sold. In a special episode, host David Schutz joins the reporters who brought him season 3, as well as two special guests to hear what’s happened in the past two months. The team also discusses the challenges of reporting these difficult cases and the child sex trafficking issues raised in our investigation. Listen now.
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Felonious Florida is a production of the South Florida Sun Sentinel in association with Wondery. follow us instagram, Twitter and Facebook. Contact us by email at feedback@feloniousflorida.com.
The Sun Sentinel’s full investigation into child sex trafficking can be found online at SunSentinel.com/traffic.