The Generation Why Podcast Blog

On the evening of March 14th 1984, 18 year old Saukville resident, Traci Hammerberg, went to meet up with friends near a local grocery store after finishing her baby sitting session. (Source) The teenagers were heading to a party in Gratton later that night, but first decided to have a couple of beers at “Quades Tavern” in Port Washington. The bartender remembered Traci, they made small talk and she told him about her plans later that night. After a night of partying in Gratton Traci decided it was time to call it and night and leave. She left the party...

Earlier this month an unkempt young man with long blonde hair and shabby clothing walked into a local bar named “Cafe De Kastelein” in rural Ruinerwold in the Drenthe province of North Eastern Netherlands and ordered five pints of beer. (Source) According to the other patrons the young man chugged five beers in a row, causing the concerned owner to strike up a conversation with the distressed young man to discover that he had been kept in a farmhouse along with several siblings and desperately wanted to escape his situation. According to the owner, Chris Westerbeek, the young man spoke “like a child”...

On September 30th, 2019, an Anchorage woman was walking past a grocery store in Fairview when she noticed an SD card laying in the middle of the street. Curious, she pocketed the flash drive, which was ominously labeled “homicide at midtown Marriott” and took it home. One couldn’t be blamed for imagining the SD card to be some sort of prank, after all Halloween was on its way and no killer would be foolish enough to commit a crime and so boldly label the evidence with incriminating details, would they? When the woman opened the folder she found 39 image files...

A couple and their adopted daughter have been the subject of headlines after speculation about her age came into question. The couple have recently plead not guilty on two counts of neglect after leaving their adopted daughter behind in the U.S while relocating to another country. Michael and Kristine Barnett adopted Natalia Grace, whom they believed to be a six year old Ukrainian child with spondyloepiphyseal dysplasia, a rare type of dwarfism, in November of 2010 but claim they began to doubt their daughter was actually a minor from the first night she spent with them. (Source) Articles online detail how...

“I fell asleep but had a nightmare” read the last text message 21 year old Hannah Bender would ever send her mother. Hannah sent the ominous message on the night of September 15th 2019. “Are you home alone?”, her mother responded. She would never receive an answer. Several days passed and no one would hear from Hannah. She was officially reported missing on the 19th and her parents were not optimistic about finding her alive. They knew their daughter well enough to know that she would never voluntarily leave or completely cease contact with them. They felt a dull pain...