NJ NJ - Susan Walsh, 36, Nutley, 16 July 1996

[millielammoreaux]

Also wondering what nature reserves are near their old home in Nutley NJ, and if they have ever been searched?

 

[Murkywaters]

The National Missing and Unidentified Persons System (NamUs)

I wonder if this could be Susan? Skeletal remains were found March 11, 1999 at an above ground location in Staten Island, she was between 30 to 45 years old. In Susan's disappeared episode, James Ridgeway recalled that not long before she went missing, Susan had phoned him and said she was out in Staten Island and had no money.

Just re quoting my post from 2015.
The National Missing and Unidentified Persons System (NamUs)

Clay reconstructions of this Jane Doe have finally been added to her NamUs profile

I thought the reconstruction resembled Susan, anyone else think it's worth reporting? The estimated date of death of the Jane Doe is between 1996-1998

 

[JrzyGirl70]

Definitely think it is a good possibility. Nose seems a bit off, but could have been broken along the way.
Sadly her father passed away in 2013 Obituaries: Floyd Merchant, retired Army Sargent 1st Class, passes away at age 80 - nj.com. Both Susan and her son are listed in the obit.

 

[Murkywaters]

After 24 years, Nutley police sued as man searches for
answers in sister's disappearance

There's a recent article about Susan's disappearance in NorthJersey.com, sadly it's behind a paywall. However it appears Susan's brother is now suing the Nutley police department.

 

[Al Ka]

Disappearance of Nutley mom, journalist and dancer still a mystery 24 years later

In September, Merchant filed a lawsuit against the Nutley Police Department seeking information on the investigation into his sister's disappearance. His father, Floyd Merchant, had hired a private investigator to help with the search and the investigator turned over his findings to the police.
---
Walsh was 6 when Merchant was born to her father's third wife, Ann. She was a sporadic presence for years but came back into his life regularly when he was a teenager, after she became sober and gave birth to her son, David.

"We were starting to kind of build a nice sibling relationship," Merchant said.

The two would speak regularly, and it became part of Merchant's holiday routine to spent part of Christmas with Walsh.
---
Walsh had been working on getting her master's degree at New York University and had submitted a short story to Morley to be published as part of a collection.

Merchant said he felt like his sister repressed her talents to support her husband's musical aspirations. Her husband, Mark Walsh, is the brother of Eagles member Joe Walsh.
---
Merchant swears his sister wouldn't just disappear willingly and leave David behind. He doesn't know if it was an accident or an act of malice or whether it was planned, but someone else was involved.

He said Walsh knew how the loss of a mother at a young age could affect someone, because he lost his own mother when he was 13 and she knew how deeply that had affected him.
---
She was 5 feet 6 inches tall and about 110 pounds at the time of her disappearance, with blond hair and blue eyes. She would now be 60 years old. She was last seen wearing a black tank dress and black sandals.

Missing Nutley NJ woman was sister-in-law to Eagles' Joe Walsh

 

[Deleted member 287549]

Recently saw the Susan Walsh segment on the original Unsolved Mysteries (S09). Hard to believe it's been 25 years since she disappeared - and her body still hasn't been found...I do think she's deceased at this point.

Based on the segment, she seemed like a devoted mother - so I don't think she would have intentionally left her son....but, then again - if you believe the father (her ex), she left the boy with him - so if that's what happened, she left the son with someone that could take care of him.

IMHO it's extremely plausible that her life stressors/issues got to be too much for her so she turned to drugs/alcohol - and, she may have died of a drug/alcohol related death. As far as her body having never been found - it's possible that after she passed, her body was taken somewhere because the people she was with were scared they would get blamed for her death and/or that they would be in trouble due to the drug use. This possibility was mentioned in the segment.

Or, she was killed as a result of the research she was doing for her stories; i.e., she got "too close" to the truth, etc.

Or, as I read after seeing the segment - maybe her ex killed her & was completely lying to LE about her leaving him with their son & never returning.

As far as the alleged sighting of her a month after the disappearance - it may have just been a red herring.

 

[Murkywaters]

'She Had a Fascinating Life': Court Mandates Release of Files That Could Shed Light on Walsh's Death | New Jersey Law Journal

An Essex County, New Jersey, Superior Court judge ordered the disclosure of records from a police department about a 25-year-old missing-persons case involving a journalist, whose disappearance the media linked to a so-called vampire subculture.

The police department in Nutley, New Jersey, where Susan Walsh disappeared in 1996, claimed its case files were exempt from New Jersey’s Open Public Records Act because the investigation is still open.

 

[imstilla.grandma]

"She did not decide to freaking go off and not be coming back," Walsh’s brother, Arthur Merchant, told Bergen, New Jersey’s The Record in 2020.

Walsh lived in a Washington Street apartment upstairs from her estranged husband, Mark Walsh, the brother of famed Eagles musician Joe Walsh, according to The Record. Loved ones reported that on July 16, 1996, Walsh left her son with his father and walked down the road to use a pay phone, promising to be back in 30 minutes, according to a September 8, 1996 article by The Record.

It appeared she had plans to return, as she left behind her purse, keys, and beeper. She was also enrolled in a Masters writing program at New York University, per The Doe Network.

During the missing persons’ investigation, Bell Atlantic cited “limited records” for why it couldn’t be determined whether Walsh placed or received any calls from the pay phone on the day she vanished, per the 1996 archive.

Years later, Nutley Detective John Rhein said in a 2008 episode of Unsolved Mysteries that investigators looked into several witnesses’ claims that Walsh climbed into a limousine when she disappeared, but the lead fizzled out.

In 2006, the New York Post reported that Mark Walsh was not considered a suspect in the case, though he allegedly refused to let investigators perform forensic tests at the apartment.

Walsh was a freelance writer who’d written a handful of articles for The Village Voice. Friend and fellow Village Voice journalist James Ridgeway confirmed that Walsh previously worked as an exotic dancer, which helped her land an assignment digging into the Russian Mob in New Jersey and their operations of sex-trafficking minor immigrants through strip clubs.

She continued to dance to support her son, Ridgeway told Unsolved Mysteries, having struggled to make ends meet. According to The Doe Network, Walsh occasionally worked at seedy strip clubs, which attracted a sordid cast of characters.

“Susan would say she was like an addict, and the whole sex business was kind of like an addiction, and she was trying to break this addiction,” said Ridgeway.

The publication helped Walsh receive an even amount of praise and threats, and though theories surrounding the Russian Mob swirled around the investigation, no leads came to fruition.

Soon after tackling the subject of organized crime, Walsh was onto another story: vampire subculture.

“She was very intellectual,” friend and filmmaker Jill Morley told The Record in 2020. “She wrote some dark stuff, and she was fascinated with subcultures.”

NJ Reporter Still Missing Nearly 30 Years After Investigating Underground Vampire Community | Oxygen Official Site

A freelance reporter from the Tri-State area vanished without a trace, a decades-old case with a handful of motives and still no explanation.

www.oxygen.com

 

[imstilla.grandma]

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[I am not Sherlock H.]

It sounds like she may have been in the grip of mania when she disappeared, just going by the paranoid things she was saying, thinking mobsters were after her, etc. Drugs and alcohol can worsen mania. Maybe she really believed she was being stalked by someone out to kill her and decided to hide out for a while. Then possibly someone harmed her later or she passed of an overdose. If others were with her they may have panicked and disposed of her someplace that she hasn't been found. But having 2 bipolar people in my family and being familiar with some of the paranoid delusions they had, she sounds like she was going through a manic state. Illogical plans would have made sense to her then.

I am very late to this thread. And while reading this post, if I didn’t know any better I could have that this might almost have described events surrounding Shannan Gilbert disappearance and links to the LISK GILGO cases.

And then reading a bit more and the location of Nutley, proximity to NY, wondered if this case had ever been compared for possible links to Rex H. or LISK?

There are separate threads for each case here:

Thread 'Possible Victim: Shannan Gilbert, 24, missing May 2010, found Oak Beach Dec 2011 #3'
Possible Victim: Shannan Gilbert, 24, missing May 2010, found Oak Beach Dec 2011 #3

Thread 'Gilgo Beach LISK Serial Killer, Rex Heuermann, charged with 7 murders, July 2023 #15'
Gilgo Beach LISK Serial Killer, Rex Heuermann, charged with 7 murders, July 2023 #15

MOO

 

[John/Jane Doe]

Susan Walsh – The Charley Project

 

[spartanx]

This case is difficult... I want to give credence to the witness accounts, but it's complicated... For starters, everyone except the friend appears to be a prostitute... It's a line of work where false names and fabricated stories are common... Many are also dealing with their own addiction issues, which are exacerbated by working in a job with no set hours or structure... They don't spend their days in an office filling out dated forms... What I'm saying is, I wouldn't be surprised if officers spoke to them and they mentioned seeing her last week, but it was actually three weeks ago, before she disappeared... Maybe they were reliable witnesses (in fact, I'm inclined to think so), but I wanted to say it...
All that said, the fact that she was in declining physical health, relapsed into addiction and became mentally unstable from going off her meds, and then simply disappeared... doesn't lead me to believe anything good happened to her, whether she was kidnapped or left of her own accord...
One I'd think she would have been arrested in the months and years that followed if she were really living the life witnesses described, in addition to being mentally unstable...
I first saw it on Unsolved Mysteries...
whatever it is,
Rest in peace.