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Sophie Reeder, then just 15 years old, had marked May 19, 2017 with an “X” on her calendar.
Just hours into the next day, Sophie left her Fort Lauderdale home and was last seen in security footage walking along Davie Boulevard at 2:16 a.m., according to the Dateline: Missing in America podcast episode “Marked with an X.”
More than eight years later, her family still has no idea what that “X” was meant to symbolize or where Sophie could be today.
“It’s like a living nightmare, a living nightmare,” her father, Patrick Reeder, told Dateline‘s Josh Mankiewicz. “You got to deal with it every day.”
Who is Sophie Reeder?
Sophie is Patrick’s only child and grew up loving music.
“She was just a sweetheart,” her aunt, Kirsten Milhorn, remembered. “She just loved being around people. Like super outgoing, gregarious.”
Sophie’s parents split up when she was about to start preschool. Her dad says when Sophie was almost 12 years old, she asked to live with him full-time because she wasn’t getting along with her mom. He agreed, as long as she committed to going to a therapist for a year.
At the time, Sophie was going through a rough patch. She was starting small fires outside, burning things like wood or stuffed toys, and was cutting her dolls. Patrick said Sophie also was cutting herself.
“One time she told me, ‘Hey, Dad, I just can’t control myself,’” Patrick recalled. “I said, ‘Well, you got to control your emotions.’”
When Sophie got into high school, Patrick said she started skipping school and hanging out with friends he considered a bad crowd. She was also caught shoplifting and continued to struggle with ideas of self-harm. A psychiatrist prescribed medication, but Sophie soon stopped taking it.
“It was really challenging,” Patrick said, adding that the two often took long drives and listened to music, which seemed to bring Sophie comfort.
“We would just, you know, hop in the car, turn on the music, whatever she liked and drive for like an hour or two, and it really helped her out,” he said. “She really liked it.”
What happened to Sophie Reeder?
Patrick thought his daughter might be turning a corner in May 2017, when she fixed a fancy dinner for him and his girlfriend. However, the very next night — the same day marked on her calendar — Patrick remembers his daughter seemed agitated and was texting on her phone around 11:30 p.m.
“She was pacing up and down the house,” he said.
Patrick said he told Sophie to go to bed, and when he woke up the next morning, a Saturday, her door was closed. At first, he assumed she was sleeping in as usual. But when he got home after running some errands, he discovered Sophie was gone and wasn’t answering his text messages. She had left a candle was left burning in her room, suggesting that she planned to return.
Fort Lauderdale Police later found $300 in crumpled-up bills in the bedroom. Patrick said he had “no idea” how his daughter, who didn’t have a job, got the money.
A search of Sophie’s computer revealed that she had been visiting websites aimed at connecting young women with rich older men or “sugar daddies” — although investigators don’t have any evidence she actually connected with anyone.
“It shocked me because I — I had no idea of course, you know,” her dad said.
Final cell phone ping
Two weeks into the investigation, police discovered that one of Sophie’s two cell phones last pinged less than two miles away from her home, at an apartment complex in the 1700 block of SW 11th Court in Fort Lauderdale. Sophie’s friends allegedly told authorities she often went to the area to buy marijuana from a 37-year-old convicted felon named Leonard Jennings.
“Her last ping of her cell phone, uh, was in an area that we believed that she may have been doing to, uh, maybe purchase marijuana or something like that,” said Sgt. Don Geiger, who took over the cold case in 2024. “We don’t believe that she left that location.”
Phone records showed that the last known phone call Sophie made was to Jennings at 3:07 a.m. after arriving at his apartment building. The phone continued to ping from that location until 9:13 a.m. when it disconnected from the cellular network. Geiger said it”s unknown if Sophie’s phone was turned off, destroyed, or ran out of battery.
Security footage captured Sophie walking to the area at 2:16 a.m., wearing a short black dress and brown fur coat. A marked Broward County Sheriff’s Office cruiser drove by the teen but didn’t stop. Geiger told Dateline‘s Josh Mankiewicz that area is close to the main jail, and the sheriff’s cruise may have been transporting a prisoner. “You know, could we have done something differently? Yeah, absolutely. But we don’t know what was going on at the time in the situation.”
Jennings, who at the time had more than two dozen felony charges, including assault, on his record, lived at the apartment complex with two of his brothers and his mom, according to the podcast. All three brothers told police they never saw Sophie that night.
More than five weeks after determining that Sophie’s phone last pinged at the apartment context where Leonard Jennings lived, police searched his apartment. The affidavit for the search warrant listed the potential crimes being investigated: kidnapping, human trafficking, and murder. During the search, police recovered 25 cell phones, two media players, computers, a journal, live ammunition, and a wig, but were unable to connect any of those items to Sophie.
A possible victim of sex trafficking?
While looking into Jennings, police discovered that three days after Sophie disappeared, he allegedly placed a call to his neighbor, a man with suspected ties to sex trafficking.
“There was talk that he had ties to sex trafficking and things like that, but I don’t believe there was ever any convictions of any sex trafficking,” Geiger said of the neighbor.
According to Geiger, police didn’t have enough probable cause to continue viewing Jennings as a suspect.
Police later searched Jennings’ apartment again, along with and his neighbor’s, after both men had moved out. They used luminol to look for traces of blood in the vacant apartments, but didn’t find any blood or evidence linked to Sophie.
Brittany Wallman, an investigative reporter with the Miami Herald who looked into the case while working at the Sun Sentinel, believes it’s possible Sophie could have been the victim of sex trafficking.
She was given Sophie’s journal by the teen’s aunt and told correspondent Josh Mankiewicz it’s clear the teen was feeling alone.
“She said, ‘I’m used, unwanted, unloved, lonely. I’m like the penny you dropped under the sofa, but you don’t care ‘cause hell, it’s just a penny,’” Wallman said, adding Sophie also made a list of things she wanted to do that year, including “get 10 sugar daddies.”
According to Wallman, police also found a “very long Instagram message” between Sophie and her best friend talking about “how much to charge for different sex acts.”
The accidental drug overdose theory
Geiger says Fort Lauderdale police have not found any evidence that Sophie was trafficked. He has another theory. He believes that Sophie may have died from an accidental drug overdose, although he has no proof.
“I don’t have the crystal ball to tell me, but I feel like if it was a homicide, somebody eventually talks,” he said.
Geiger believes it’s possible someone may have then thrown Sophie’s body into one of the nearby canals or disposed of it some other way. Although specially trained cadaver dogs have searched the wooded areas near the Jennings’ former home, those searches have yielded nothing to date.
According to Geiger, police didn’t have enough probably cause to continue viewing Jennings as a suspect. Jennings has never been charged with any crimes related to Sophie’s disappearance, but the detective says he remains a person of interest.
Patrick — who has kept his daughter’s room just as she left it — still hopes that someday he may find his daughter alive.
“I have hope and a belief that she is,” he said. “Nobody ever wants to know that their kid has gone before them. I believe I can handle it either way, but I would like the hope and the happiness of seeing her alive one day.”
At the time of her disappearance, Sophie was described as being 5’1” tall and weighing 100 pounds. There is currently a reward of up to $25,000 being offered for information that leads to her recovery. Anyone with information about the case is urged to call the Fort Lauderdale Police at 954-828-6677.
