When a teenage girl goes missing after a party with friends, her family must fight for answers. What happened to Angela?
Episode Media
Episode Sources
- Angela Rene Jaramillo – The Charley Project
- Angela Jaramillo – The Polly Klaas Foundation
- Have you seen this child? Angela Rene Jaramillo
- Petition · Reopen the Case of Angela Rene Jaramillo
- Police Fear for Missing Teen’s Safety
- Dallas police step up search for missing Molina High School student
- Dallas police locate witness sought for questioning in case of missing girl
- Missing Teen: Angela Jaramillo’s Disappearance Being Investigated by Dallas Homicide
- Dallas woman hopes new leads can help her find daughter almost four years later
- Angela’s mother’s YouTube interviews 1 | 2 | 3 | 4
- Angela’s sister’s Facebook posts 1 & 2
Episode Transcript
Welcome back to Bite-Sized Crime. This week I’m bringing you a missing persons case from Texas, one that has left a family without answers for over a decade. This episode discusses sensitive topics, so listener discretion is advised.
Angela Rene Jaramillo was born in Dallas, Texas, in October 1993. The oldest of four siblings, Angela was smart and creative. As a young girl, she loved spending time at home doing crafts and studying for school. She was a spelling bee champion and a straight-A student. Angela was quiet and shy, but she started to come out of her shell in high school when she joined the soccer and volleyball teams.
In the winter of 2010, 16-year-old Angela was a sophomore at Molina High School in southwest Dallas. She had a solid group of friends and was well-liked by everyone who knew her. She was responsible and reliable, and her parents trusted her. So when she asked to go to a party on a Saturday night to celebrate a recent volleyball victory, they said yes.
On the night of January 23, 2010, Angela got dressed in cute jeans and a gray hoodie, threw on a pair of black Vans, and added a few pieces of her handmade jewelry to complete the outfit. Around 11:30pm, she said goodbye to her mom and headed out. Her mother Stephanie told the Dallas Morning News that she didn’t see who Angela left with, but someone must have come and picked her up, because she didn’t have a car of her own.
A few hours later, Angela texted her mom and asked if she could spend the night at her best friend’s house. Given the late hour and the fact that Angela didn’t have school the next day, Stephanie gave her daughter permission to stay over.
At 9:30 on Sunday morning, Stephanie texted Angela to ask when she was coming home. When she didn’t get a response, she tried to call her daughter’s cell phone, but Angela didn’t answer. Figuring that she had been up late and might be sleeping in, Stephanie called the friend Angela had spent the night with. The friend told Stephanie that Angela wasn’t there – in fact, Angela hadn’t come to her house at all.
Stephanie immediately knew something was wrong. She contacted the Dallas Police Department and asked to file a missing persons report. Unfortunately, but perhaps unsurprisingly, they told Stephanie that she couldn’t file a report until 72 hours had passed, even though Angela was a minor. When she finally was able to file the report, Angela’s case was classified as a juvenile runaway, even though Angela had no history of leaving home.
Frustrated by what she felt was a lack of urgency, Stephanie pushed forward on her own. She reached out to Angela’s friends, hoping that someone knew where she had gone. The boy who hosted the party on Saturday night told Stephanie that Angela had stayed and watched movies for a while before leaving around 2am. Angela had apparently told her friends that she was waiting for her ride, but no one knew who it was that picked her up. She had just vanished.
Days turned into weeks, and there was still no sign of Angela. Her bank account hadn’t been accessed, and her phone was going straight to voicemail. Dallas investigators searched areas where Angela could have gone, places where teenagers liked to hang out. They asked Angela’s mom to provide pieces of her clothing for DNA comparison should they come across something of interest.
Most sites reporting on Angela’s case state that at some point in the investigation, her phone was found in a local park, and authorities said they located “unspecified evidence” that indicated Angela may have been injured. However, Angela’s sister has said on Facebook that the phone was found by two teenage boys who claimed they had sold it for marijuana. Angela’s mom has said that the police never had possession of the phone, nor did they get any of Angela’s phone records, so it’s unclear where the discrepancy comes from.
By March of 2010, investigators had exhausted all their leads. The case was eventually handed over to the Dallas PD’s Special Investigations Unit, and a homicide detective was officially assigned to the case. Sergeant Eugene Reyes told the Dallas Morning News that he didn’t believe Angela was a runaway. “We believe there might be more to this. It’s out of character for [Angela] to be gone.”
Reyes also told CBS affiliate KTVT that he was surprised by the delay in transferring the case to homicide. “I can’t believe that it took this long for someone to understand that she’s not just a runaway.”
At the end of March, police began circulating a video showing a potential witness they wanted to get in touch with. According to the Dallas Morning News, the woman had allegedly told someone at a local pizza shop that she had seen Angela recently. Police were able to locate the woman, but they never stated whether or not her information was helpful to the case.
As the months and years passed, Angela’s family received multiple reports of potential sightings around Dallas. In 2013, Stephanie told the Dallas Morning News that a group of girls had spotted Angela playing basketball in the park, and they recalled complimenting her hairstyle.
Stephanie also said that Angela’s ex-boyfriend told her that he saw Angela in September of 2013. She had been at Arcadia Park with four men around 3:30 in the morning. He told Stephanie that he had tried to follow their car and called the police, but he wasn’t able to get their license plate number before he lost sight of them. Even if it wasn’t the news they wanted, every new sighting gave the family hope.
By this time, Angela was 19 years old, a legal adult. If she was found safe, no one could force her to go home if she didn’t want to. But Lieutenant Barbara Hobbs told the Dallas Morning News that they still wanted to find answers. “Even if she doesn’t want to contact her family, we can update them, give them some peace of mind that the sightings they’ve been seeing are her.”
Angela’s family refused to give up. Some days they believed Angela had met with foul play, some days they worried that she was being held against her will. Some days they wondered if she had just run away and was living a new life somewhere. Stephanie told the Dallas Morning News, “Me being her mother, I don’t want to give up. I can’t.”
In 2014, Stephanie managed to get her hands on a police report from her daughter’s case. According to Angela’s sister, who posted an excerpt from the report on her Facebook page, investigators never told the family that someone had confessed to killing Angela way back in 2010.
The report states that the Dallas PD had been in contact with a girl whose ex-boyfriend had told her that he had “messed up and took someone’s life.” The ex-boyfriend wouldn’t tell her where it had happened or give her many details, but he said that he had blood on his hands and had cleaned up the crime scene. He became increasingly upset during the conversation and confessed to her that he had felt a rush while killing Angela. He said that when the police had come to talk to him early in the investigation, he had lied about what he knew.
It’s unclear whether police followed up on this lead, or if they did, how far they took it. No one has ever been named a person of interest in Angela’s case, but her family believes that the young man who confessed was telling the truth.
In February of 2023, Stephanie gave an interview on YouTube in which she laid out the entire case. She recalled talking to Angela’s friends in the days following her disappearance, trying to figure out where her daughter may have gone. She also claimed that the person who allegedly confessed to killing Angela was one of the friends who had supposedly found her cell phone and sold it for weed. When Stephanie saw his name in the police report in 2014, she went to his house to confront him, but he wouldn’t answer the door. He eventually moved out of the area.
Stephanie believes that that young man is responsible for Angela’s disappearance, that he was the one who gave her a ride from the party. She also believes that there are others out there who know the truth of what happened to her daughter. Out of desperation, Stephanie consulted a psychic who told her that Angela was hurt by three people and that she was somewhere close to the water. The family tried to search local waterways such as Mountain Creek Lake, but police told them they weren’t allowed to search on their own. However, it doesn’t seem that there were any official searches either.
Angela’s family has been critical of the investigation. They believe that the Dallas Police Department moved on from Angela’s case too quickly and wasted time that could have been spent finding her. They have said that the detectives assigned to the case were not available to them and dismissed any leads they brought to their attention. They believe that Angela deserves a real investigation.
In June of 2025, Stephanie started a petition to the Dallas County District Attorney’s Office to get Angela’s case reopened. I have linked the petition in the show notes if you’d like to add your support.
As of this recording, Angela Rene Jaramillo is still missing. She was last seen in the Oak Cliff area of Dallas, Texas, in the early morning hours of January 24, 2010. She may have gotten in a vehicle with an unknown individual. At the time of her disappearance, Angela was 16 years old; she would now be 31. She is described as a Hispanic female standing 5’8” tall with brown hair and brown eyes. Her tongue and ears are double pierced and she has scars on both knees.
If you have any information about the disappearance or current whereabouts of Angela Jaramillo, please contact the Dallas County Sheriff’s Department at 214-671-4268. And please share Angela’s story on social media. Don’t let her be forgotten.