Original subtitles

Law enforcement searched for a missing woman.

She was limited to her yard.

There just wasn't a huge footprint.

And my first thought as a parent was,

why would you leave your child?

My heart sunk because we were

eight months behind the eight ball.

It's not a normal encounter that you just come to the door

with a card for your attorney.

He tells Ellie something that confuses and disturbs her.

She can't get any straight answers.

This area would be an ideal location to dispose of a body.

That's when I knew something was very, very wrong.

I literally fell to my knees 'cause that is my worst fear.

Being from Kansas, I'm constantly

combing newspapers

for some kernel of a story that might work for People.

This one jumped out, and the fact that it took place

in Prairie Village, I couldn't believe it.

I grew up there, rode my bike

around the sleepy little suburb of Kansas City.

A young girl's mother disappears...

These are pictures of us.

...and she can't get any straight answers.

In 2019, 51-year-old Angela Green

and her 67-year-old husband, Geoff,

live in the Kansas City suburb of Prairie Village

with their daughter, Ellie, who's a college freshman.

Although originally from northern China,

Angela has spent most of her adult life in Kansas.

When Angela was in China, she was studying journalism,

and she had done some modeling work.

Her goal was always to get out of the small town

that she grew up in.

Angela had an older sister, Catherine, who she idolized,

who had married an American, and they lived in Kansas.

Seeing how my parents had built a new life in the U.S.,

I think she kind of wanted that same thing.

When friends of Angela's parents introduce her

to American businessman Geoff Green, the two hit it off,

and Angela jumps at the chance to start a new life

with him in America.

And in the late 1990s, they move in together

in Prairie Village, Kansas, near Angela's sister, Catherine,

and her young nieces.

We just had a really special bond.

It was always just me and my aunt

going on little adventures.

I thought she was so beautiful,

and I wanted to be beautiful like her.

Geoff and Angela wed in 1998, but she has a hard time

settling into life in Kansas.

When my aunt came to the U.S., she was always self-conscious

about her English, so she really kept to herself.

Angela's life in America isn't the fairy tale she had in mind,

but that changes in 2000 when she gives birth

to her daughter, Ellie.

I think when she had Ellie, that made everything

make sense for her.

Like, "OK, this was all worth it."

Her whole world became Ellie.

In 2022, People interviewed Ellie about this absolute

nightmare that she's been living through.

Yeah.

She had me as her only child, and she just really, like,

poured her heart out to me and invested

all her time in me.

I was also very close with my dad.

We always went to Take Your Daughter to Work Day,

and went to his car shows that he competed in.

Geoffrey worked in the IT side for support

within the courthouse.

He was involved with woodworking,

working with his cars.

Him and my mom seemed happy. Every couple has its arguments.

I saw them also go through that, but I knew

that they loved each other and I was their main focus.

Angela was concentrating on raising Ellie.

Geoff was working.

I think their situation was pretty routine,

but Ellie grew up basically in a very restricted environment.

Ellie was just really close with her parents

and taught to obey her parents and not really question them.

She wasn't allowed to have play dates or sleepovers.

Angela taught her Mandarin,

so she would have somebody to speak to.

And over the years, Ellie became her confidante

and really the only person that she could talk to,

especially after her sister, Catherine, moved to New York

in 2004.

She really made me focus on school.

I mean, she was a tiger mom, but now, looking back,

I appreciate that. It made me who I am today.

In 2018, Ellie goes off to the University of Kansas

as a freshman, moves into the dorms,

makes lots of new friends, and she's having

the time of her life.

But for Angela, her mental health took a steep

decline during that period.

I knew that she struggled with me being on my own,

but also she wanted to be there for me, and that struggle

really took a toll on her.

Angela had some perhaps undiagnosed mental issues,

and she was struggling with the upcoming loss of Ellie

in the household and not a particularly

terrific marriage at that point.

I was their main focus, and that may have possibly

strained their relationship.

Angela's mental health issues became so pronounced

that at one point, Ellie and her father actually

had a conversation about trying to figure out

a way to get Angela some professional help.

There would be moments that Ellie described her mom

as possibly being bipolar.

Angela told Ellie that she worried that something was

wrong with her mentally,

but she didn't seek any treatment.

Historically, she had not

wanted to see a doctor for any reason.

Unlike her mother, Ellie's excited by the chance

to experience the world outside of their home.

She formed new relationships and was bolder, with exploring,

going on vacations or trips.

By mid-June, Ellie's freshman year of college

is behind her, and she's making plans for her summer

that do not include spending a lot of time at home.

Ellie said, "Yes, I'm going to live at home.

"Oh, but I have this job, so I'm gonna be gone doing that.

"And oh, I have this boyfriend, Zach,

and I wanna spend time with him."

It upset her mom.

I knew my mom was increasingly upset, but I never knew why.

I've never been able to figure it out,

and I probably never will.

You can only imagine that she felt so isolated

to begin with, and now her only link with the outside world

was pulling away from her, and she erupted.

Angela had told Ellie, "If you don't ever

wanna be home, then why don't you just leave?"

And Angela took some of Ellie's things and just threw 'em

by the door and was like, "Just leave.

I'm done with you."

Instead of, like, dealing with it, she just decided

to, you know, push me away and kick me out.

Our son, Zach, said that Ellie had been kicked out

of her house, and I said, "Let's have her come here

until things blow over."

Ellie knew when her mother lost it,

the best thing to do was get out and let things

simmer back down.

I was waiting for an apology from my mom.

I expected to get home the next day.

I never would have imagined that it had blown up

as much as it has.

She didn't reach out to me like she had always done.

She never got that call from her mom.

The night of the fight became the very last time

that she ever saw her.

After four days pass, Geoff reaches out to invite

his daughter, Ellie, back home.

Geoff texted Ellie and said, "Your mom is gone.

"She's at a hospital getting help

for her mental health problems."

He said he, along with mental health aides,

had ambushed her in a parking lot

and then taken her away to some sort of mental institution.

There were a lot of people by my side at that time.

In 2022, Ellie talked to us about when she first learned

that her mom was gone.

My dad told me that my mom was taken to a mental institution.

And I had asked him, you know, where that was,

and he would never give me a straight answer.

Ellie described to me that horrible moment

of learning that her father had committed her mother

to a psychiatric hospital, and quickly one of her first

things she asked was, "Where is she?

I wanna go see her."

Ellie was really frustrated that her dad wouldn't

give her any information about where her mom was.

I asked to go visit her, and he said he had already

done so and that she tried to get physical with him.

Geoff kind of told her that it wasn't safe to visit.

Two weeks later, Geoffrey reached out to Ellie

and said, "Hey, come to the house.

"Let's clean it up a little bit.

"We'll put some pictures up of mom so that when she

gets released, we can support her."

Geoff made her go through all of her mom's clothes

and only pick out a few outfits to keep.

And Ellie thought, "When my mom gets back, she's gonna be

so mad that we were, like, getting rid of her clothes."

Then on July 16th, nearly a month after Ellie

last saw her mother, what seems like

a tragic situation goes from bad to worse.

Her dad had texted her and said, "I have something

to discuss with you."

And then around 11 o'clock at night,

we heard someone in the driveway.

Geoff got out of his car

and then, with no emotion, told Ellie...

Angela died of a stroke.

And she just crumbled and collapsed.

I was shattered. I mean,

when I was told that, I literally, like, fell

to my knees in the driveway. Like, I fell on the ground.

That was my worst fear, was I was losing my mom.

Um...

At that point, Geoff robotically

beelined back to his car, got in, and drove away.

Zach burst into our room, and he said,

"Ellie's mom died."

So my husband and I sat straight up

and like, "Wait, what?"

And we came downstairs and Ellie was there just

in complete shock, like a shell of herself.

And we hugged and we cried.

And my first thought as a parent of three children

myself is why wouldn't he have taken Ellie with him

when her mom died?

Why would you leave your child?

The day after the kids were told that Angela died,

on July 17th, we invited Geoff

to come over to our house for lunch.

Ellie tried to ask for more details.

Are we going to have a memorial or anything?

And Geoff just shut it down.

"No, I'm not doing that. I'm not ready."

I'm thinking, this feels a little awkward that his wife

has died and nobody's talking about it.

Whenever Ellie would dare to ask her father

about what had happened to her mother,

he had a litany of excuses.

"It's too painful." It made him too sad.

He just completely gaslighted her whenever she tried

to approach him with a question.

I had no reason to believe at that time that there was

something wrong, like not to trust my dad.

Not only is Geoff refusing to talk to Ellie

about her mom's death, but he also doesn't want her

to mention it to her sister, Catherine.

Her sister was in New York.

So Geoff kept saying, "It's not the right time.

Wait till things are, like, settled down a little bit."

I thought it was strange, but I didn't want

to butt in too much.

For Ellie, finding out that her mom had died,

all she really had left was her dad, and so she really

followed his lead and trusted him.

I went to therapy. I had a psychiatrist.

I just didn't know what anxiety was.

I didn't know what depression was.

I didn't know what I was going through,

but I knew I needed to talk about it.

Ellie wanted to reach out to her aunt and cousin,

but she was the dutiful daughter who followed

her dad's wishes, and he was saying, "It's not time yet.

I'm not ready yet."

After months of frustration with her father

always giving an excuse as to why he wants to keep

Angela's death a secret, Ellie realizes that she

has to be the one to tell her mom's sister.

I just had, like, a big pit in my stomach, and I called

Michelle's mom, and I just could get out the two words,

like, "Mom's dead."

I called my mom, and she said, "Hold on, your cousin Ellie's

on the other line. She said that her mom died."

And I was like, "Oh, my God, OK, talk to her."

Michelle waits for her mother to get off the phone with Ellie

and calls her back to get details about Angela's death.

My mom said Ellie just kept saying that she died

on the 16th, and so my mom was like, "Today's February 13th.

How could she have died on the 16th?"

And Ellie said, "No, she died July 16th."

And so then my mom was just in complete shock.

I called Ellie and asked her to walk me through what happened.

She said that her dad had ambushed Angela

in a grocery store parking lot and then taken her away.

And then as soon as I heard that, I thought, as a lawyer,

there's absolutely no way that would have happened

without any court order or judge ruling.

And so then every time I kind of asked another question,

Ellie just didn't know anything.

Ellie can't tell Michelle what facility Angela was in

who notified her father about Angela's death,

or even where Angela's body is.

I just said, "OK, well, do you have her death certificate?

"If we have this, we can see where she died, how she died,

who signed off on the death, so we could get some answers."

I told Ellie that she had to go to the vital records office

in Topeka, Kansas, to get a copy of her mom's death certificate.

Ellie drives to Topeka the next day, February 14th,

to look for the death certificate.

The clerk was able to find her marriage certificate,

but there was no death certificate.

That's when I knew something was very, very wrong.

After we found out there was no death certificate in Kansas

for my Aunt Angela, I thought either she died

in a different state, or authorities were never

alerted of it, or she was still alive.

All just bizarre possibilities at that point.

After learning that there is no death certificate in Topeka

for her mother, Ellie gets in her car and drives

straight back to Prairie Village to her father's house.

Ellie said she asked him, "Where did mom die?"

And then, he said, "Kansas."

And then she said, "No, she didn't.

"I tried to look for her death certificate,

and there wasn't one for her in Kansas."

And so then Geoff had said that, "I thought it was Kansas,

but maybe not. I'll have to go check."

He couldn't provide me any proof.

When Ellie told me what had happened, she slowly started

to realize how bizarre everything was.

So that day, I called

the Prairie Village Police Department.

On February 15th, 2020, Michelle called,

wanting a welfare check on her aunt, Angela Green.

She stated that nobody had seen her for a long time

and that she had been told that Angela had passed away.

Prairie Village officers responded to Angela's home,

and at that time, Geoffrey actually

pulled into the driveway.

The officer said, "Hey, we're here to check

the welfare of Angela."

And he says, "She's out with friends."

He gave them consent to come inside

and look for Angela, which they did.

There were no signs of Angela, and officers asked Geoffrey

if Angela was alive

because they had heard reports that she had died.

And Geoff said she was alive and that it was crazy.

He wouldn't know why anybody would say that she had died.

I got a call from one of the officers saying,

"Oh boy, you really got it wrong."

I was just like,

"No, no, no, no, no. He's been telling his daughter

that her mom died in July."

And so I thought, "They need to speak with Ellie."

The following day, Ellie leaves her college dorm

at KU and goes to the Prairie Village

Police Department and files a missing persons report.

Ellie and I went in to talk to two officers,

and while we were sitting in there,

Geoff happened to call.

So the police recorded him talking to Ellie.

Ellie says, "Hey, what happened to Mom?"

He goes into talking about how he was at work

and someone from the facility called him.

We were kind of helping her ask questions.

The police can't believe what they're hearing.

Something is not adding up.

That didn't make any sense at all.

We kept getting these strange...

pieces of information.

Geoff was always just changing his story,

but he's doing it very nonchalantly.

I thought, "Well, that's weird."

She gets off the phone with her father

and then continues filling out the missing persons report

that starts the investigation.

We became suspicious right away.

There was no record of any death.

We contacted numerous hospitals, mental hospitals,

never had any record of Angela.

We checked for death certificates nationwide.

There was no death reports.

And we know that you cannot cremate somebody

without any sort of death certificate.

We did look at every possible transportation by boat,

by to train, by bus to see if there was any way

that she did leave on her own.

And none of those were fruitful.

Angela lacked the social media footprint and some other

footprints that other people have, such as credit history,

bank cards, different things like that.

My parents were telling her, "You need some sort of way

to build credit. You should get a credit card."

They knew that Geoff did not have Angela's name

on the house deed, and her response was,

"No, Geoff told me I don't need to."

So she never had a credit card.

We talked to all the neighbors.

They thought that something was out of the normal for sure.

They hadn't seen Angela for a long time.

They said Angela used to be seen fairly frequently

taking care of her yard and the flowers

in the medians around the neighborhood.

The summer came up, and Angela wasn't out

as usual, I'd ask other neighbors, and they thought

maybe she had gone to China.

She had almost like a ghost-like

presence in the community.

I mean, people would see her maybe going

to the grocery store, but really didn't speak to anybody,

couldn't speak to anybody.

So the next day after Ellie files

the missing persons report, detectives from

the Prairie Village Police Department

travel to Lawrence, and they meet Geoff

at the property that he had purchased months earlier.

Ellie told us that Geoff had purchased a residence

in Lawrence, Kansas, which is where

the University of Kansas is.

He was going to fix that residence up

and let Ellie and her roommates live there.

Detective Wakefield knocks on the door.

Then the door opens and we're met by Geoffrey Green.

I immediately identified myself as a detective

with the police department,

but Geoff didn't say anything to me.

He just handed me a card of a attorney.

It's not a normal encounter that on the first time I knock

on your door you just come to the door with a card

for your attorney.

That's very unusual and definitely made me think

that there was more going on.

At that moment, my heart sunk because we were

eight months behind the eight ball.

We knew that this was going to be a challenging case.

With Angela missing for nearly eight months,

the police go to work searching for evidence

that can point to what happened to her.

We contacted Geoff's brother and his sister-in-law

to see what they knew about Angela

and what had happened to her.

They told us that Geoff told them

that Angela died of a stroke at their house

in Prairie Village.

That was obviously concerning.

Now, we've had three different stories

of what happened to Angela.

The police realized the story that Geoff's brother

and sister-in-law were telling them about that final night

was different than the story that they had told Ellie.

On the day when Ellie filed the missing persons report

for Angela, she had also called Geoff's family members

to let them know what was going on.

And they said, "There may have been an accident involved

and your dad really needs to get a lawyer."

We immediately thought, OK, they know more than Ellie knows.

But by the time Ellie was able to get ahold of

Geoff's family members again, they just refused

to speak with her.

Family members reprimanded me for asking questions.

They were like, "Why can't you just let it go?"

I've seen the nasty texts that his side of the family

have sent Ellie for just asking a simple question like,

"Hey, do you wanna get lunch?" And them being,

"If you dare speak about your dad,

there is no way I'm getting lunch with you."

And then her being like, "How can I not ask questions?"

I believe the family knows exactly what happened

to Angela.

While we were talking to Ellie, we learned that Geoff had

the house in Prairie Village.

He had the house in Lawrence, Kansas,

and he also had a friend that had some property

in Olathe, Kansas, where Geoff stored, like, a trailer

that had some tools in it, a car.

In early March, the police obtain a warrant

for the Prairie Village house

as well as the property in Olathe,

but there isn't enough evidence to obtain a warrant

for the Lawrence house since he bought it

after Angela disappeared.

Law enforcement searched for a missing woman

in two different areas in Johnson County,

the first outside of a home in Prairie Village,

the second near a business in Olathe.

We did have cadaver dogs that went through the backyard.

We didn't find any signs of blood or anything like that.

In the house, we did recover Angela's ID,

her purse, her passports.

It would be very difficult for somebody to continue

to have a lifestyle without having

her driver's license and passport.

While police searched the Prairie Village house,

Detective Taylor heads to the 35-acre storage area

that Geoff's friend owns in Olathe,

all of which Geoff has access to.

About 70 law enforcement officers and cadets

from eight different departments searching the large piece

of property on North Woodland Street,

that includes open spaces, wooded areas, and a pond.

They searched 35 acres of land.

A dive team searched a pond on the site.

We canvassed that area and water by grids

and searched for any human remains of Angela Green.

Actually, as you look straight right that way,

there are two trailers.

For sure one of 'em is Geoff's.

I thought they were gonna find human remains.

We collected evidence and did DNA swabs of the trailers.

That did not come back with any evidence

related to Angela Green.

You can see the buildup of dirt among the trees.

There was a time when it was basically flat,

but in February of 2019, they began excavating

for the new Johnson County Courthouse.

In the eight months since Angela's disappearance,

construction had begun on the new

Johnson County Courthouse.

Everything they had excavated had been dumped

in that storage lot.

There was a steady daily stream of thousands

and thousands of loads of dirt coming in here, maybe, you know,

20, 30, 40 feet of dirt that was gonna be put on top

of that whole area.

So while we were doing our investigation,

we had different terrain from eight months prior

when Angela went missing.

This area in Olathe would be an absolute ideal location

to dispose of a body

under 30 feet of soil on top of it.

By the summer of 2020, with no one coming forward

with information about Angela's disappearance,

and without the capacity to dig 30 feet down into the dirt,

the Prairie Village police call in the FBI.

In August of 2020, I became involved with the Angela Green

missing persons investigation.

One of the things that I do in a missing persons investigation

is we try to understand the victim.

And in this case, she didn't work anywhere.

She was pretty limited to going to the store, her yard.

There just wasn't a huge footprint.

So the FBI, provided the Prairie Village Police Department

with resources to conduct additional physical searches.

And we're continually trying to find potential leads

and more avenues for us to follow up on.

By the end of 2020,

a year and a half after her disappearance,

Michelle and Ellie decide

that they've gotta take matters into their own hands

by posting videos on TikTok about Angela's disappearance.

Welcome to part one of "Who the F did my aunt marry?"

I just felt so defeated.

And I'm confident that Geoff was involved

with what happened to Angela.

And so one day I just decided to make a TikTok video talking

about what happened to my aunt and how ridiculous

Geoff's different stories have been.

My aunt went missing almost over two years ago

under very suspicious circumstances

in Prairie Village, Kansas.

Next morning, when I woke up, It had a couple million views.

I think Geoff intended for Angela to be forgotten about.

With the support that I got from social media,

I wanted to make sure that kind of the exact opposite would happen.

Thank you all so much for your support.

I became familiar with this case

because I discovered this whole media campaign.

I mean, it went viral.

This is my mom. These are pictures of us.

I have been publicly advocating for my mom

for almost a year now. My mom is still missing.

Michelle and I created a petition called

"Justice for Angela Green."

Ellie and I had set up a GoFundMe to raise money

to be able to hire private investigators.

And through the GoFundMe, Steve Ridge had reached out

and said that he was a private investigator

and he was willing to take on the case pro bono.

And so Ellie and I gave our blessing to do so.

I was able to forge a very good working relationship

with the two of them.

I've studied the escalation of troublesome relationships.

I talked to the next-door neighbor.

They described Geoff as a very mysterious guy

and pretty controlling.

From what I've read, Geoff and Angela's relationship,

that is the recipe for confrontation.

I do believe that the night of the argument with Angela,

after Ellie left the home, things escalated

between Geoff and Angela, and regardless of

who started it, she ended up dead.

As Steve continues to search for any information

on where Angela ended up, Ellie pursues her own investigation,

consistently recording her conversations

with her father.

Ellie was still in contact with Geoff.

He continued to pay for her schooling.

I think he was basically trying to keep their relationship.

He was like, "I don't like being cross-examined."

I was firing questions at him, and he'd either, like,

avoid it, or he'd lie.

Lies upon lies, but, like, little breadcrumbs

that would lead me on, but then they'd always be

dead ends, like, every single time.

Geoff was surprised that Ellie was really pushing him

on certain things.

His stories were bizarre.

The following summer, Ellie goes to the house

in Lawrence and is shocked to see

her mother's favorite flowers, hostas, planted in the backyard.

These flowers that Angela grew in their garden

at the Prairie Village home were dug up and brought

to the Lawrence property.

Then Ellie went on the Dr. Phil show

and told them that she noticed

something really strange in their garden.

They had asked her to collect soil from the area where Geoff

replanted the hostas and that they would send it for testing.

I took different samples of this mound that my dad had

planted my mom's flowers on.

I had like private investigators

on the other side. I was like FaceTiming them.

Then I zipped them all up, I shipped them off

to California where they were.

They put it out in their field in three separate piles

and they had their dogs go out.

Each of the dogs sat down at the dirt piles.

They told her that the dogs

had hit on possible decom bodies there.

We took that information to our District Attorney's office.

We were able to get the search warrant for the yard

in Lawrence that Geoffrey had purchased back

in November of 2019.

We were really hoping that Angela's remains

were in the backyard.

We sifted the dirt,

and we did not find any evidence of human remains

or decom bodies there.

I think we were hopeful and then ultimately

disappointed when not much came of that.

The case is far from just sitting in the back burner

in a filing cabinet somewhere.

The Prairie Village Police, the FBI, the DA,

they want this thing solved.

In the summer of 2022, I told Mr. Green that this case isn't

going away, that we're gonna continue to follow up on it,

and that we're gonna find the truth

of what happened to Angela.

After years of trying everything she can

to find out what happened to her mother,

Ellie decides to put the case behind her.

She moves to Colorado to finish college

and tries to move on with her life.

The last time that Ellie saw Geoff, Ellie said to him,

"I know you won't say anything now, but before you die,

"can you at least write me a letter

of what happened to Mom?"

And that's the last time she saw or spoke with him.

Yeah.

Although Angela has now been missing for six years,

in addition to the police and FBI, both Ellie's cousin,

Michelle, and Steve Ridge have not given up the search.

Yeah, I think that's his truck right there.

I'm gonna go see him.

All right.

I'm gonna go see if old Geoff will come to the door.

I have some information on Angela that I wanted

to share with you. - And who are you?

I'm Steve Ridge. I'm a private investigator.

I've been working on the case for three or four years.

All right, well, you can drop off whatever you want,

but we're not gonna have a conversation.

The Iowa private investigator Steve Ridge is offering

reward money out of his own pocket

to help find Angela Green or her remains.

I had put up a reward offer of $50,000.

I would gladly pay that out at this point to know

where Angela is buried.

Every single day for years, my aunt has been

the first thing that I thought about when I woke up

and the last thing I thought about before I go to bed.

I don't have peace and I don't think that I'll ever get that

until I figure out what happened to her,

which is why I refuse to give up on sharing her story

and really trying to get answers.

The goal is to determine what happened to Angela.

The more people that know about that and the more people

that know that something did happen or that she is missing,

it helps the investigation.

Our agency needs someone to come forward.

But we firmly believe that family and or a friend

of Geoff Green knows exactly what happened.

I think that people who surround Geoff and are

protecting him now need to recognize that he has not

and will not protect them and that justice can be served

with their involvement.

But I promise that Geoff will never know a single day

of peace until we figure out what happened.

She was murdered brutally.

Anybody that does anything like that is a monster.

Her voice was shaking and she was scared.

Who could hace done this?

Now it's time to hear the truth.