On May 26, 1970, twenty-six-year-old Ilonka Cann vanished from the rural Pennsylvania farmhouse she shared with her husband and fifteen-month-old son.

The day before, she had spoken with her parents in Ohio and talked about coming home for a visit that summer.

She never made that trip.

In the weeks and months that followed, investigators searched fields, ponds, and woodlots surrounding the isolated property where Ilonka was last believed to have been seen. Her family spent decades searching for answers as the case slowly faded from public memory.

More than fifty years later, renewed interest in Ilonka's disappearance led to new searches, a coroner's inquest, and testimony that cast the events of May 1970 in a very different light.

In 2024, a coroner's jury concluded that Ilonka Cann died by homicide at the hands of another person.

This episode examines the disappearance of Ilonka Cann, the decades-long search for answers, and what it means when official recognition arrives generations after a woman goes missing.

📍 Huntington Mills, Pennsylvania | May 26, 1970

📖 Featuring an original poem written and read in her honor by Aimee Baker.

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On November 2, 1945, fourteen-year-old Thora Chamberlain left school in Campbell, California, expecting to attend a football game that evening.

Her friends saved her a seat.

Thora never arrived.

Witnesses later reported seeing her speaking with a man dressed as a serviceman before getting into his vehicle. Within weeks, investigators focused on Thomas McMonigle, a local laborer with a history of violence. Over the course of the investigation, McMonigle gave multiple confessions, led authorities to key pieces of evidence, and was ultimately convicted of Thora's murder.

But investigators never found the one thing that mattered most.

Thora herself.

More than eighty years later, Thora Chamberlain remains one of California's earliest no-body homicide victims. Her body has never been recovered.

In this episode, we examine the disappearance of Thora Chamberlain, the investigation that followed, and the evidence that secured a conviction despite the absence of a body.

This is a story about loss, memory, and the empty seat left behind when a child never comes home.

📍 Campbell, California | November 2, 1945

📖 Featuring an original poem written and read in her honor by Aimee Baker.

➡️ Help bring attention to missing and unidentified women—subscribe and share this episode.

📍 Find us on Instagram & Facebook.

📚 Get Aimee’s book, Doe, now available via University of Akron Press, Bookshop.org, and Amazon.

📰 For more women-centered true crime content, subscribe to Aimee’s newsletter, GIRLHUNT.

Most people assume that unidentified persons' cases are actively investigated, that somewhere, someone is still working to restore a name to the dead.

But the reality is often far more complicated.

This week, She Goes by Jane presents a special interview with author and former FBI agent Katherine Schweit about her new book, Women Who Talk to the Dead: The True Story of 200 Forgotten Murder Victims and the Relentless Pursuit of Justice by an FBI Agent and a Detroit Police Detective.

Together, we discuss the unidentified dead of Detroit, the challenges of solving decades-old cases, and the investigators who refuse to let victims disappear into forgotten file boxes and evidence rooms. We also explore media neglect, institutional barriers, and the quiet, persistent work required to restore names and histories to those who have been lost.

At the end of the episode, actress Mary Lynn Rajskub reads Aimée Baker's poem "Detroit, and Other Sorrows," a meditation on memory, absence, and the lives that remain even when names are forgotten.

Because every unidentified person was once known. And every name returned is a story reclaimed.

📍 Detroit, Michigan | 1950s-Present

📖 Featuring an original poem written in honor of one of Detroit’s formerly unidentified Jane Does read by Mary Lynn Rajskub.

➡️ Help bring attention to missing and unidentified women—subscribe and share this episode.

📍 Find us on Instagram & Facebook.

📚 Get Katherine’s book,The Women Who Talk to the Dead, now at Bookshop.org.

📰 For more women-centered true crime content, subscribe to Aimee’s newsletter, GIRLHUNT.

More about Katherine Schweit:
Katherine Schweit is an author, attorney, former Chicago prosecutor, and career Federal Bureau of Investigation special agent who helped jail bank robbers, kidnappers, and domestic terrorists, while working daily with local police investigating and responding to mass casualty and active shooter incidents. A native of Detroit, Ms. Schweit earned a bachelor’s degree in journalism from Michigan State University. She earned a law degree at DePaul University and joined the Cook County prosecutor’s office as an assistant state’s attorney.

More about Mary Lynn Rajskub:
Mary Lynn Rajskub is a comedian, actress and writer, best known for playing ‘Chloe’ on the Fox drama 24 and ‘Gail the Snail’ from It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia.

This spring, Mary Lynn will co-star in the Netflix series, North of North, and she premiered her second hour-long stand-up special, Mary Lynn Rajskub: Road Gig, on YouTube in December. Her book, FAME-ISH: My Life At The Edge Of Stardom, is a comedic look at Mary Lynn’s awkward and endearing missteps on the road to becoming fame-ish.