Five Miles From Home - Ep. 1: Mickie

her mind determined as she rode down interstate 80 across Northern Nevada, which she could see, reveal what she knew, she was just 18, tiny, 98 pounds and barely five feet tall, but the story should took with her on that torture drive, was she knew, but it changed everything.

“She came and we talked and we recorded the conversation with her permission, and it was dynamite.”

The man she had come to talk to was a distinguished attorney.

If anyone could advise her, surely it would be, about the story she said she had to tell. It had been eating at me and eating at me. I couldn't sit there and live with myself knowing what I knew. And then, out it came, the whole terrifying story, possibly true, and possibly a careful and cunning deceit. I was too in shock and I didn't know what I was feeling. It was like I was in a daze. Still was, she said, about the thing that happened and about who was there and what happened after and what might happen next.

“In a small town deep in the American desert.”

They deserve to be in hell for doing that, and there is nothing they can say or do that will make it better.

They cannot fix this. Some things aren't fixable. Some things are hard to explain. It doesn't make sense. I still wonder to this day why what's the real reason or what even really happened. I'm Keith Morrison, and this is five miles from home, a podcast from day to night. Episode one, Mickey.

There is a place, a remote, windy place tucked away in the sliver of northeast Nevada next to the Utah border.

You'd certainly see it if you cruise along Interstate 80. Casinos, five of them, flashing away like some vagus in miniature, a golf shot or two off the highway. The town of 4,000 are so spilling out under the surrounding desert. And if tempted by a meal or a restaurant or a roll of the dice, if you pulled out that highway, you'd be welcomed by a great grinning cowboy for the improbable towering image of one, 63 feet high, garrison, weirdly charming as it waves a welcome.

A giant concoction and neon on steel they call "wind over will". For West Wind over, name of the town, and a reminder of more innocent days.

“It's pretty much the only thing Wind over was known for.”

Her name is Christina. She knows what happened to innocence, knows all too well. Now, you know, everybody's like, "Oh, Wind over. Oh, do you know that girl?" It's a question unfortunately that gets asked because we have a lot of tourists that come into the casino towns from all over. And that's what Wind over's known for now. Yes, even now, all these years later, and how did it begin?

That memory is as clear as the morning sun on the high desert, and cold. Like the desert wind that Thursday morning in March, 2011. 16-year-old Michaela Costanzo, Mickey, is everybody called her, was up early preparing for school. She was a creature of habit, was Mickey. She stuffed her signature polka doted black bag full of track here. And then made sure she had her lannard full of keys with her favorite charm, little panda there.

The mother's sealia, a single mom, quickly dressed, so she could drop Michaela's school before heading to her hosting job at one of the local casinos. All very routine, except for one little thing. The thing about coming home after school. Was she supposed to walk home, which is not a normal thing for her?

But Christina was out of town, vacationing in Las Vegas with her boyfriend soon to be husband. Here's Christina. I thought that everything was fine. I mean, everything was normal.

“I remember because before we had left me and/or my boyfriend would always pick Michaela up from school.”

And so we were like, "Are you sure you're going to have a way home?" This is something you do every day. This is something I do every day. And it was the very first time I had ever left my sister. Still, it wasn't far to walk, a mile or so in this relatively safe little town, and Mickey wasn't worried. Not at all. She wasn't the worrying type. She was confident, pretty and popular.

It was long dark hair, warm, brown eyes, and easy smile. People seemed to gravitate to her, so their mother is Celia.

She had a way of looking at life that was just amazing. She was always positive.

Celia's brown eyes were beaming, as she told me about the youngest of her three daughters. If someone was not so good or it wasn't such a great day, she'd say, "It's okay. It'll get better." She found the good and everything and everybody. And Mickey was quite good herself. A super student, a gifted writer, a star athlete. And the leader of the West Windover Wolverine track team.

And so that day after classes, she hurried to the locker ring, suited up in her bright red running outfit. Laced up her spikes.

“And headed down to the big oval track for some speed training.”

There was no mistaking Mickey fast and graceful, as she glided through her laps in the high altitude air. Long hair flowing, legs pumping, perform, and air perfect. After 45 minutes of sprints and stretching, Mickey went to the gym for a week training session, followed by a quick change of clothes in the girls locker room, and then out the schools back door to walk that mile or so home.

It was just after 5pm. Across town, Syria was schmoozing with customers inside the bustling nugget casino. But her mind was on Mickey. And the phone call should be getting from her any minute now. Michaela is not your typical teenager.

That girl would check in with me all the time. I'm changing, I'm going to be heading out. The next call I get from her is, I'm heading home. Always kept in touch. Always two of fault.

But Mickey did not call. So, Syria called Mickey.

She'll never not answer me.

“It does not matter what she does, she dancer.”

And she's always been like that. And so, at a quarter after five, I started calling her phone. And it rang and rang the first time. The sun, orange and anxious, sank behind desert foothills. And then the next call, it went straight to voicemail like the phone was off.

And I'm like, okay, this is so not her. So, Syria, panic, rising. Called her eldest daughter Christina 400 miles south in Las Vegas. Here is Christina. She said, "When's the last time you talked to Mickey?"

And I said a few hours ago. And she says, "I can't find her." And I said, "Mom, she's probably at practice." And she says, "No practice." They ended and she's not home.

And I said, "Well, maybe she went to the gym. Calm down because my mom's was easily upset. You're probably just missing her." Christine, the tethered to be the cool head in the family. But you're in wise with cold dark eyes under a pair of wire ring glasses.

She wasn't too concerned.

And I'm thinking maybe for the first time in her life

She's being a normal teenager. Really? So you still weren't worried. I was trying not to worry. And so my husband's telling me the same thing.

Don't worry until she doesn't go to school tomorrow. He says, "If Mickey's being a normal teenager and hiding out, doing something crazy, we both know she'll go to school in the morning. Even so, Christine had dialed Mickey. Fully expecting an answer.

And it rang and rang and rang and then went to force now. So I left her a voicemail. Mickey, why aren't you answering? Call me back. Mom's going crazy.

So I waited. Nothing. Called my mom back. And I was telling her, calm down. You know, it's when to work.

She never does anything. It was dark by then. Dark and suddenly cold.

“45 excruciating minutes had passed from Mickey's normal call in time.”

At the casino, Celia could no longer pretend to be calm. I was still at work. I had been frantically texting and calling and everything. Just getting more and more upset. More and more upset because I knew the moment she didn't answer her phone.

The first time something wasn't right.

The second time I knew something was really wrong. And with that, Celia dropped everything and raised home, hoping she'd see Mickey on the way or open the door to encounter her smiling face. But the house was silent.

Nobody home. So Celia, heart pounding hurried to the high school. Check the track, the gym, the locker room. All empty. Frantic now.

She roared out of the school lot. Looking to find anybody who knew Mickey. And they started trying to call herself on and wasn't getting answers. And I'm going to the next friend and that friend I had just talked to is calling other friends and they're all panicked.

Because none of them had seen or heard from Mickey either.

Celia was bargaining with God by then, as she hurried home again. Please, better be there. Please. But Mickey wasn't.

Only her middle daughter DJ was home. Then my mom came in. She said, "Nik is not here." So I immediately went out and searched for her. Called her friends called my friends.

“If you hear from Mickey, you need to tell me.”

And then I called her phone, Romata said, "This isn't funny." You need to tell me where you are. What's going on. That Mickey didn't return DJ's call with a bad sign.

The two were closed, practically inseparable. Even looked alike. I consider us twins.

We always promised to stick together no matter what.

And to be each other's best friend. If we weren't at the same place, we always had to knew where the other was at all times. But now nobody knew where Mickey was. So Celia nowhere else to turn called the West Windover Police Department.

Would they take it seriously? It would. And right away, a sign detective Donald Burnham. We don't wait to start responding to somebody that's missing. We'll start looking right away.

The longer you wait, the harder it's going to be to find him. Burnham, lean and 30 something. It'd been a cop virtually half his life. Chiseled face, short, cropped, black hair. Round the department, Burnham was known as the quiet one.

Cool and circumstance. The offered Celia a ray of hope. I didn't believe she was dead. I was hoping maybe she was just somewhere and we weren't able to find her at the time.

That she had just gone off to be with a friend and been irresponsible for once. We didn't know whether that was it or if she met with foul play or if she was being restrained and held somewhere against her will. That evening, volunteers search teams ventured out into the profound darkness

beyond the neon glow of the town's casinos. Their flashlights stabbing at vast empty desert. There was already over 80 people looking for her and they're all panicked.

“What did you feel like while all this was going on?”

That's a hard question. Scared, upset, panic, worry, because it was dark now and it was cold and she had no jacket. And Celia waited.

waited as a mother would wait on the longest night of her life. I didn't sleep. It was horrible. And in the bottom of my heart, I knew something was really wrong.

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See you at your details. That first night, they all agreed. All the searchers.

Mickey Castanzo didn't just wander off.

Someone took her. Holding her in town? Maybe. But somehow it seemed more likely she'd been taken out there somewhere.

Out in what they call, the Great Basin. 200,000 square miles of unforgiving desert that makes up most of Nevada. Here are jagged mountain peaks,

deep promote valleys, sand, and sagebrush. And somebody says the middle of nowhere. This is the place. Early the next morning, volunteers were back, combing the empty desert around West Wind over.

Here's Detective Burnham. There was a large search party that was formulated and they had constructed different groups, the search different areas. There was a huge turnout of volunteers for the search.

Just regular folk from around town. In times of need, we all come together and everybody turned out. Among them, of course, was Mickey's sister and soulmate. DJ.

And out searching, I remember dropping out of the ground. And I said, "I really don't think she's alive."

“"They're like, "You need to think positive."”

And I said, "I really just don't... This isn't her. This isn't all right." And I just kept calling her phone. Crying, begging her.

Please answer. Please be okay. But it wasn't okay. Downstate at an RV side outside Las Vegas and ostensibly on vacation.

Mickey's eldest sister Christina tried to do the impossible. Both sleep and persuade herself that Mickey would show up. Safe and sound. woke up at 6 o'clock, called my mom, still no sign of Mickey.

So I called the school. And I'm like, is she showed up for class yet? No. They're still looking for her Christina. And I'm like, "Oh, my God." And at that moment, I knew something had happened.

And I woke up. My husband and I said, "She is not in school." And he said, "Okay, now we worry. What do you want me to do?" And I said, "I don't know."

By now, media had gotten wind and descended on little West Bend over. Satellite trucks and news vans with giant microwave antennas sprouted like palm trees. Beaming the fears of Mickey's friends

and neighbors back to Salt Lake City. And nearby towns in northern Nevada. I just hope that we find this little girl safe.

I never thought anything like this would ever happen to anyone over.

The news made its way south to Las Vegas. Where Christina was chained to her cell phone trying to figure out what to do. And a couple of our friends actually had shown us that Mickey's picture went in the news that she was missing.

And she said, "Cristina, nothing bad happens and went over." And I said, "You are absolutely right." And I looked at my husband and I said,

“"Do you need to take me home right now?"”

He says, "Well, what changed your mind?" And I said, "Cause nothing happens and went over and something did. And I have to get home." And he took his truck and drove me straight home.

It's about an eight and a half hour drive. He got me home in about six and a half hours. Christina and her husband drove all afternoon and into the evening. The whole way back home, I kept crying and he would say, "It's okay, you don't even know anything.

And I kept telling him, even if she's just hurt somewhere. It's cold and it's 24 hours now. That's all I could think. Even if she was just laying somewhere hurt, she wouldn't have made it because it was cold.

All the way home, she worried away at terrible ideas.

“What if some stranger, some traveler, saw her walking home”

from school and snatched her. After all, the Casinos depended on the tourists to pull it off the interstate for a few free drinks and a little roulette, blackjack or whatever. It was no way, Barry, as Detective Burnham said.

"It's not a small, pliable community that most people would like to assume." "Yeah, it's a little place along the road, but it's got stuff going on." "It's got big problems at times and we do have our share of violent crimes." Thus, the fear that some passing motor is to take in there.

Because around home, Mickey was what cops call a low-risk victim, not an enemy of the world. A straight arrow, going places, good places.

A totally troubled free life.

Mickey was the one who was going to do everything I guess. He would say the right way. She was going to finish school. And she had such a bright future.

“She could have done anything that she put her mind to it.”

Bright, talented, good-looking, the truth, the trifecta. "Yes, she had it all." And one more thing about Mickey, she was unusually generous. Not with money, she didn't have much of that. But sharing herself, said her mother, Celia.

"She helped everybody. She tutored kids at school. If she goes to bed at 10 o'clock at night, and you're struggling on homework in this one o'clock in the morning and you text her or call her, because you need help, she will get up and help.

And she'll tell me, "Mom, I have to help, Jackie. I have to help, Havia. We have a project they can't do it. Well, no, no, but Mom, they're my friend. I have to."

Havia, by the way, was Havia Trujillo, Mickey's boyfriend. Soft, spoken, polite, young man. The two have been dating for several months. It seems serious, Celia. McHale was not allowed to date until she was 16.

Her first real boyfriend is Havia. You would have to see McHale and Havia together and hear them, and that was her boyfriend. In fact, the entire Castanzo family liked Havia, and he was crazy about her.

And she could have had her pick-up boys at school, said sister Christina, but...

McHale would never look to anybody else.

She was very happy, and she was very much in love with Havia. Now, police wanted to have a little chat with Havia. He wasn't a suspect, at least not yet, but he was part of Mickey's inner circle.

“And what did he know about where she was, or if she had been taken?”

So, Detective Burnham had him come down to the police station, where he should Havia into a small, white-walled interrogation room. Havia seemed a little nervous, upset too, as his eyes twitched ever so slightly, as Detective Burnham rolled tape, and started asking questions.

How should I connect him lately? I know she's been acting pretty funny. If she's... if something was wrong, she'd vent. She's no more than those pros that hides her feelings, like putting her emotions in her throat.

Yeah, and we haven't had any problems. Havia said he had no idea where Mickey was, who she was with, or what happened to her. Said he was at work around the time she was setting out from school to walk home. They checked his alibi, of course, and...

Yes, he was, indeed, at work, just like he said he was. I got out and I turned yesterday, and I'm looking for a different person to, like, to... I think she's not safe, because if she was, she'd known to find other people. I've ever seen to be just as fratically worried as the rest of her family.

So they let him go. The wise one way to track down Mickey, or what happened to her, and to take the Burnham was on it. Mickey's cell phone records. Her family told the detective she used that phone a lot.

The records couldn't tell him what Mickey said or to whom she said it, but it would reveal the phone numbers she was communicating with. And the specific times of those calls and texts. And right away, something stood out. At the very time, she left school for that walk home.

Here's Detective Burnham. There was a lot of text and phone calls transpiring just immediately after school and up till just after five. And then they stopped. They abruptly stopped right at the time that she had left the school.

But there was more. And this might matter. A lot. Those calls and text messages pinging off the local cell phone tower were all from one number.

There was something going on something. What did you think about that? Very suspicious.

“Time to find who ever owned that other phone.”

[Music] It was a virtual gold mine, a jackpot of numbers, phone numbers, that had flowed in and out of Mickey Costanzo's personal cell phone. All her calls and texts from the very day and time she disappeared. It was now Friday, day two, the Mickey's mysterious disappearance.

Inside the west window of her PD, Detective Donald Burnham was holed up in his sparsely decorated office. Carefully perusing those pages and pages of calls and messages. His eyes must have been glazing over, scanning what seemed like an endless list of digits chronicling Mickey's constant phone activity. And though he couldn't see the content of those messages, something did jump right out. Had to be important.

Her phone either was disabled or the battery was dead, but in any manner she never made another phone call or text after leaving that school.

And there was something else. Those last calls in and out of Mickey's phone. The ones made just before she disappeared. We're all from one number.

“So, Detective Burnham traced the number and found the name.”

The last calls were made to a Cody Patton. Cody Patton? Cody was a classmate in Mickey's, practically a member of the family. See what you told the detective? Or not quite that, but he certainly hung around enough.

Cody and Mickey had known each other most of their lives. They grew up together.

He was our apartment manager, son, he was always around.

Not like a boy friend, since you're just a pal, a chum. Her DJ and Cody, they hung out, they were all best friends. Did they ever date the kill-on? No. They didn't date.

But I'm sure it was probably what I call puppy love. You know, so. At 12 or 13. Probably 13 or 14. Yeah.

But they'd long since moved on.

“Cody was 18 now, a senior at Mickey's high school.”

And he certainly stood out. Big handsome, strapping kids six foot six. With ginger-colored hair and hazel eyes, everybody in town seemed to know him. And he was engaged, well and truly committed. In fact, he'd moved in with his fiancé, Tony Frato, and her parents.

He had told he played the Mary sometime after high school. And Cody also had a sight set on joining the marines after graduating. So now, a detective-burner wanted to know a little more about that flurry of phone calls and text messages. Cody exchanged with Mickey just before she vanished. I actually went to the school and asked him if he'd come to the police department.

Speak with me which he agreed to.

This was actually Cody's second interview with the police.

He was one of many students and friends of Mickey's the cops spoke to that first night. And now that I stay, he looked tired. He seems sad, a little on edge. But with this lifelong friend missing. Detective Burnham started recording.

It's March 4th, 12 new, exactly. I took the stories and don't want to know what's going on. Well, the night's 30 minutes Cody reviewed again and again. What he did and where he went, the day of Mickey's disappearance. Especially during that flurry of calls and texts on Mickey's phone just before she disappeared.

It was a fairly simple story. Cody had returned to school. He said in a white SUV he borrowed from a friend. Wanted to use it to pick up some car parts he'd left there. It was a chore. And he thought maybe Mickey was still around extra pair of hands to help. I had text to go kill him after she'd tell me no answer.

So I called her and no answer. She called me back. I had left my phone in the car when I was getting some of the part of his stuff. They kept missing each other, said Cody. Until around 5 p.m., when Mickey called back and the two finally connected. I said, "Katee Cavalry." She goes, "I can't have to go home."

I said, "Okay, no worries." But something in her tone on the phone seemed off. Not the usual upbeat Mickey. She seemed a little upset, said Cody. I asked her if she was okay because she had a weird tone of voice kind of like it indifferent. I was like, "I don't know, sad. You mad type." She was like, "You alright?"

She was like, "Okay, no worries." The night I hung up.

The last time he seen that was a fun series.

Did you see that movie in the school? Yeah. Fortunately, he was going out the front. I'm sure you were. I was like, "Who was there? Who was there? Who was there? Who was there?"

“Sitting down the last known sighting of Mickey could prove crucial.”

And Cody was empathic. He watched her walk out the front door of the school and that was the last time he saw her. Burn him, filed that away, and went on listening. After he left campus said Cody, he picked up his fiancé, Tony Frotto, and they went to McDonald's for a bite and to hang out.

And then later, the two drove around looking for Mickey. Because by then, the alert had gone out that she was missing.

Everybody is out looking and so we went to a room full of a bit.

They had crossed much of the town, said Cody. They even drove by Mickey's house, didn't see a trace of her, though. They got home a little before 10pm. And now, well, Detective Burnham asked the question. "What do you think about your opinion?"

“Honestly, I hope she has got to fight a little boy for him all the time.”

So I'm telling you, it's just a good friend's answer. Do you have any questions for me? Yeah, fine, please. At the very time, Cody was pleading with the detective. Search teams were continuing to check every gully and ditch

and hole and hillside, in town and out, deep into the night.

By then, the ghost towns of the little apartment. Celia was gripped by a cold certainty. When she didn't go to school on Friday morning, I knew I wouldn't see my daughter. Oh, life.

I didn't know how to make things right for DJ, and I couldn't make things right for Mickey and they felt like a failure. As a parent.

“By now, what little hope DJ had left was running on fumes.”

And just the more hours I went, the more I searched for and then panicked. She hasn't called. She hasn't done anything. That's not her. Especially not Demi, she'd send me a text or something, I'm fine.

But nothing. Later that Friday evening. Eldest daughter Christina rolled in after the long drive from Las Vegas. I went to my mom's house and I told her that I was going to go find my sister. And she was very upset and she was like Christina.

They're all looking for her and I said, "But I'm going to go get her and bring her home." Even though she's not okay, I will bring her home. I knew that I was going to find her and I wasn't going to find her the way we wanted to. But that I was going to bring her home. And out she drove into the ink black desert.

Chris crossing miles of remote dirt roads. Surveying all the party spots where West went over teenagers were known to hang out. I stopped and looked at any little mound of dirt. But look weird, I'd stop, maybe that's her. And I went to the gravel pits.

In point of fact, had Mickey been able to call out to her sister at one particular moment during that frantic drive. Christina would have heard her. He heard her calling out there in the dark of the desert. Next time.

I went straight to my mom's and she says, "They've called off the search." And I said, "I know where she's at." What do you think? You got that call. I thought the worst. I'm looking up shaking, cops there.

My heart sank to the pit of my stomach. This is not over yet until the person or person's responsible and brought to justice. 5 miles from home is a production of date line and NBC News. Robert Dean is the producer. Brian Drew, Marshall Housefeld and Meredith Greenstein are audio editors.

Molly DiRosa is associate producer. Adam Gorphane is co-executive producer. Paul Ryan is executive producer and Liz Cole is senior executive producer. From NBC News Audio, sound mixing by Rich Cutler.