American Writer Susan Walsh Goes Missing Outside Her Home
Susan Walsh was a writer and freelance journalist from Wayne, New Jersey. Born Susan Young, she aspired from a young age to be a poet. She attended William Paterson University, where she studied English and Writing and worked as a journalist for the university paper. She also worked intermittently as a stripper and erotic dancer to help pay her tuition. Despite the development and struggles with substance abuse and alcoholism, she graduated with a bachelor’s degree in 1988 and found work as a writer for engineering and business publications. Later on, she was employed by Screw Magazine.
In 1984 she married Mark Walsh, brother of famous musician Joe Walsh, and in 1985 the couple had a son named David, though the couple’s relationship would not persevere. On July 16, 1986, Walsh left her Nutley, New Jersey apartment which she shared with her son – her estranged husband lived on the floor below – to run errands. She left her son in his father’s care while she walked to a payphone across the street to make a call.
At the time of her disappearance, Walsh was enrolled in a Master’s program in English at New York University, which she had completed half of, while supporting herself and her son as a freelance journalist and various stripper jobs. Her friends at the time worried that she relapsed into substance abuse after being clean for right-about 11 years.
After her Disappearance:
Police eliminated Mark as a suspect in Walsh’s disappearance early on. They also noted that the entire page for the month of July was missing from her calendar. Although police had little evidence with which to further their investigation, rumors arose that suggested that Walsh’s vanishing had something to do with one of two sinister organizations she was herself investigating as part of her journalism work:
The Russian Mafia - Walsh had written an in-depth report for The Village Voice about a strip club ring run by the Russian mafia in which members were forcing young women and girls into the sex industry. While she earned much praise for the article, she also received a number of serious threats.
The Vampires of New York - Shortly after the report on the mafia’s sex work operation, Walsh wrote an article that explored an underground vampire community in New York City, but The Village Voice did not publish it, as the report did not meet the paper’s standard for objectivity.
Police were ultimately unable to link the disappearance to her work for either article, but noted that Walsh had developed a close friendship with journalist James Ridgeway, who described her as his “most reliable” writer. Walsh took an active part in a number of other journalism projects at the time, including a documentary by her friend Jill Morley, titled Stripped, which discussed women in the sex industry. On July 14, just two days before her disappearance, she took part in a group interview for the film, during which she mentioned having a stalker – a comment corroborated by a former boyfriend in whom Walsh confided that another of her exes was stalking her, in a 2006 article in The New York Post. She also took work for a German documentary crew making a film about Russian immigrants becoming go-go dancers and was subsequently developing a documentary with the BBC on the subject. Walsh’s last know work is her contribution to the book Red Light: Inside the Sex Industry by Ridgeway and Sylvia Plachy.
Walsh’s whereabouts remain unknown, and the case of her disappearance goes unsolved.
Her Friends’ Concerns:
After her work on the mafia article, Walsh took an assignment looking into the vampire community of New York and their underground nightclubs. These clubs attracted kids who self-identified as ‘goths’. They commonly wore strange, even outrageous, black outfits, but some among them went further, even drinking real blood. Walsh reportedly became attracted to this vampire world, even dating a man who claimed to be one for some time. According to Ridgeway, she believed a lot of what the vampires were telling her, about things like secret murders in the vampire world, and he even recalled one time Walsh expressed reservations and concerns. She reportedly told him about two men who had a van, whom she was looking to interview, but that she was scared to go into the van with them. Ridgeway advised her not to go because the men might not have been vampires, and might have had other goals. Throughout the process of writing the article about them, Ridgeway felt that Walsh was losing her Journalistic objectivity.
Following her failure to get her vampire article published, Walsh went back to stripping and dancing full-time. In her interview for Stripped, the documentary made by her friend Jill Morley, Walsh talked about how hard her career was on her. She claimed the work was draining her, that she was damaged by her years in the business, and that she was hurting. Morley also recalled a conversation she had with Walsh two days before she disappeared. She claimed to have bronchitis, emphysema, and an ulcer and had mentioned being in the hospital twice that week. Walsh talked about her mood swings, being depressed, and that it was all she could do to just keep living.
Ridgeway feared that during this time of darkening mood and mental/emotional struggles, Walsh had relapsed and become addicted to drugs again. He stated his belief that Walsh called someone on the payphone to come to get her, and that she very likely overdosed in the presence of someone that she knew but who was too frightened to do anything about it.
Another theory of what happened came from Detective John Rhein of the Nutley Police Department. He believes that Walsh is alive and intentionally ran away from home. He came to this conclusion after information from a sighting by one of Walsh’s friends, Melissa Hines, who believes she saw Walsh a month after her disappearance. Hines produced a license plate number that police tracked and found. The man who owned the vehicle confirmed that he had been with a woman who matched Walsh’s description, and when shown photos of Walsh, was fairly certain it was her, but he couldn’t be sure.
Susan’s father believed that Walsh was being followed by the mob. He claimed that Walsh believed it, and at first he thought it was her imagination, but he also began noticing cars following her, and him whenever he drove her around. He genuinely believes that she is being stalked.