The Disappearance of Joanna Lopez

Today, I’m going to be covering the case of Joanna Lopez, a teen who’s missing poster may have been fabricated.

The Case

Joanna Lopez was a young woman from Chicago, Illinois. This is about all we know about her, because her missing poster never gave any more details. The way that her missing posters were broadcasted were strange as well, and have caused many people to wonder if Joanna Lopez is even a real person.

On January 14th, 1989, the NBC-owned Chicago channel WMAQ wrapped up it’s presentations for the night. The newscasters signed off, the National Anthem was played, and the programming ended. Only, there was a still image on screen. A missing poster for a woman named Joanna Lopez. There was no information on the woman, such as age, race, height, or weight, only a phone number for the now-defunct local police’s youth division. The image in the poster was, quite frankly, creepy. Because of its low quality, likely from being a photocopy, it makes Joanna not look human.

The image stayed on screen throughout the night, and disappeared the next morning when the programming resumed. This seemed to be an anomaly, a one time event, because Joanna’s poster was not shown the next night, or the night after. But that wasn’t the end of it, because Joanna’s poster was shown once more on WMAQ.

In 1991, almost three years after the original missing poster’s airing, the poster was aired again after another conclusion of programming. However, this poster was of slightly higher quality, and this time the poster didn’t stay up for long. The image only remained on screen for approximately ten seconds before cutting to colored bars and a long high-pitched beep, and finally cut to black.

Outside of these two broadcastings, there has been no found record of a missing woman named Joanna Lopez. Many people have speculated as to whether Joanna is real or not, due to the station never airing other missing persons posters. It was theorized that Joanna Lopez was a made up name and was to be used as a testing card for the station. This, however, was later disproven.

Almost one year before the original Joanna Lopez missing poster airing, another poster for another young girl, Tricia Kellet, was aired. This missing poster included more details than Joanna’s, with a last seen date of May 7th, 1982. It included the same phone number. This is the latest confirmed update we have in the case.

The Theories

There are some theories as to what happened to Joanna, and what caused her to go missing. I’m going to list the most popular theories here.

• Joanna was murdered as a sex worker. Since we know that Joanna is likely an older teen (17-19), it’s suspected that she was involved in sex work where something went awry. A Jane Doe has been found that resembles Joanna in the area she went missing, the Doe was found in an alleyway less than 24 hours after she was murdered. She was naked from the waist down with the exception of one sock. It is widely believed that this Doe is Joanna, however there is no official way of determining it.

• Joanna was a runaway from foster care (and possibly murdered). Since no details were given about Joanna, it’s possible that the people who reported her missing didn’t have a lot of details. For example, if she ran away from a new foster home, the foster parents wouldn’t know much about her and therefore not have many details to put on the missing posters. It’s still possible with this theory that she is the Doe above.

• Joanna is still alive and safe in Chicago. A member of the subreddit dedicated to investigating and finding Joanna made contact with a woman of the same name living in Chicago. The woman claimed that she did run away in the late 80s, but that she returned home herself. The call is confirmed to have occurred, but there is no way to confirm that this woman is the same Joanna Lopez we are searching for.

Given that these theories are drastically different, until the case is completely solved you have to choose what you believe happened to Joanna.

Conclusion

We can’t say for sure what happened to Joanna, we can’t even say for sure if she is a real person. However, I do hope that if this Joanna is real and out there, that she is alive, safe and happy wherever she is. Whether she is the woman who was contacted will likely remain unknown, and whether she is a real person or not will likely remain unknown as well. We can only wait and see if anything more comes from this case.

If you have any information on the disappearance of Joanna Lopez, or believe you have sighted her, please do NOT call the Chicago Police Youth Division (the number on the poster) as it is now defunct. Instead, please call the Chicago Police Department at 312-746-6000. If you would like to remain anonymous, please call 1-800-222-TIPS (8477).

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