The Banality of Evil

A Missing Teenager in the Age of Spectacle and Speculation

Kiely Rodni, a 16-year-old girl from Truckee, California, has been missing for 12 days, and yet there’s remarkably little information about what happened to her.

Since August 6 according to ABC News, “dozens of law enforcement personnel have been involved in the search, including foot patrol, aircraft, canine and dive teams. Other local, state and federal agencies, including the Truckee Police Department, the Nevada County Sheriff's Office, the California Highway Patrol and the FBI, are assisting the Placer County Sheriff's Office in the investigation.”

But despite all that searching, and the fact that before she disappeared Kiely was at a party with many other kids she knew, there’s no information about her whereabouts.

What Do We Know?

Here’s an official timeline pulled from the NBC affiliate website in Reno:

“August 5, 6 p.m. - [Kiely Rodni was spotted in] surveillance video from a business in Truckee … before she went missing.

“August 5, 11:30 p.m. - Lindsey Nieman, Kiely's mother, who gave Kiely permission to attend a party at the Prosser Campground, received a text from her daughter asking if her curfew could be extended to 12:30 a.m.

“August 6, 12 a.m. - Elsa Pekarek [a 2022 graduate of Truckee High School; she hasn’t been mentioned in the media as being a friend of Kiely] who was at the party saw Kiely around 12 a.m.

“August 6, 8 a.m. - Kiely's mother woke up not knowing where her daughter was. She checked Kiely's phone location and it stated her last location was at the Prosser Campground. She called Kiely's best friend who said she [the best friend] left the party early and they were …supposed to meet at a Starbucks to go camping at 9 a.m. Kiely's friends went to the Prosser Campground and did not find Kiely or her car.

“August 6, 9 a.m. - Kiely's friends and mother wait at Starbucks in Truckee hoping Kiely would arrive for their scheduled camping trip, but Kiely does not show up. Kiely's mother calls the police to file a missing person report.”

That’s about it. The biggest reveal in the last 12 days involves two hoodies that Kiely was supposedly wearing at various times the night she went missing. According to Kiely’s mother, “I recognize both sweatshirts. The darker one belongs to her best friend. The lighter one is something that I've seen her wear time and time again."

What Else Have We Heard?

Two friends have placed themselves front-and-center in the volunteer efforts to look for Kiely:

Magdalene Larson (“Mags,” often referred to in the media as Kiely’s best friend) says she was at the party for only about 10 minutes before leaving with her boyfriend. She says many older guys were approaching her demanding that she smoke weed with them, so she left.

Sami Smith has given a lot of media interviews. It’s a little surprising, isn’t it, that law enforcement hasn’t told her not to? Sami’s version of events gives the impression she was with Kiely (more or less, off and on) all night before she disappeared.

In one interview on the All American Dream Chaser YouTube channel, Sami said: “I was with her throughout the entire party…. We were trading drinks, we were sharing drinks… We went to her car to charge her phone, and we were talking about random stuff, and [long pause] it’s kind of hard to remember, and so [long pause] — or no, we were talking about, um, her texting her mom and her charging her phone and stuff,… We had a few other friends in the car and then we decided to go back to the party…. I had asked her for a ride home when we were in the car, because my ride was leaving, and I wanted to stay at the party longer, and so then we ended up, um, splitting up at the party because I went to find another ride, when we got back into the party after leaving the car, so that we could um [long pause] sorry my mind is um [inaudible and the interviewer talks over her].”

Later in the same interview, Sami said:

“At the end of the party when she call — when I saw her, I- she was supposed to give me a ride home because I’d asked her to give me a ride home, because I wanted to stay later. I then realized later in the party that I believed she was drunk, and I knew she was drunk, and so I did not want her to be driving me home, because I know about drunk drivers and all that, and I figured she would be staying there or she would find a ride home, because she’s a smart girl…. I found her as I was leaving the party, I was making sure to find her to tell her that I had another ride home, and that um, I loved her, and I wanted to say bye and for her to have fun at the party. And then when I left the party, we were um, we were pretty much on 89 with my ride, and um, she called me as I was in the car in the passenger seat, and she was like, ‘Hey, uh, where are you? Do you still need a ride home?’ And I was like ‘No I’m OK, like, I’m in the car right now, I’m driv-, I’m like getting driven home now,’ but Kiely did not have a set ride home, and she, I was under the impression that she’d either sleep there or find another ride home. Um… and… I … it, it was not known that anybody was going to give her a ride home. She was not, when she called me, she was not in a car. I could hear the party and many people talking in the background.”

In an interview with the Independent, Sami says that the in-person goodbye to Kiely happened at about 12:25 pm — well past the time that Kiely would have had to leave to be home by 12:30 as her mother was expecting — and at 12.36 am Sami says Kiely called her from the party asking if she still wanted a ride home: “She called me … and this is the last call anybody had with her. We said ‘love you, good night. Get home safe,’  and that’s the last thing we heard of her.”

So Let’s Compare Sami’s Timeline to the Official Timeline

Kiely’s mother got a text from Kiely’s phone at about 11:30 asking to extend her curfew to 12:30. (This seems to be a very conscientious thing for Kiely to do, if she was drinking all night, but it sounds as though she’s typically a conscientious person.)

Kiely is spotted by Elsa at the party around midnight — right at about the time she’d need to be on the road to get home by 12:30.

Sami says she sees Kiely at 12:25 and says goodbye.

Sami gets Kiely’s final phone call at 12:36, despite the fact that they supposedly said goodbye in person to each other 10 minutes before. This is at about the same time that law enforcement says that Kiely’s “last ping” occurred at the campground.

That’s the hardest part of this timeline, really: Sami says she gets that call from Kiely, supposedly from the party, and then bam, Kiely’s phone never pings again, and Kiely and her car vanish.

Did Kiely suddenly leave the party after that phone call? But did no one see her leave? Did she get into the car and immediately drive into the reservoir after her call with Sami? That would seem to be what the timeline requires — but how likely is that?

Did Kiely ever get in her car to drive home?

Regardless of how likely it is, the phone seems to have been permanently turned off, or destroyed, immediately after that call to Sami, and Kiely and her car then vanish without a trace. Twelve days later, no more information or clues seem to have turned up. The people looking for Kiely — including some fifty FBI agents — seem no closer to finding Kiely than they were on the day she disappeared.

What Happened to Kiely?

The people in charge of the investigation seem to have no idea what happened to Kiely — but that doesn’t stop the Internet or true crime fans from spouting opinions. Full disclosure: I have a daughter close in age to Kiely, and I have a small personal connection to this tragedy, but even if I didn’t, I’d find the Internet reaction to this missing girl deeply distressing.

Just one example: last night, while looking for news of Kiely, I found a true crime YouTube video where a panel — and they seem like well-intentioned, decent humans —speculated on what happened to her, for four and a half hours, as if this were a mystery novel and not a real missing person.

Their theories got more and more wild, and — there’s just something ghoulish about throwing these theories around, talking about who seems “sus,” what manner of bizarre and unlikely things might have happened to Kiely (in absence of any evidence), when there’s a real family at home, heartsick, wanting nothing more than their loved one’s safe return.

This is not a novel. Kiely’s story is not a Netflix Original.

Another example: In the past couple days, a lot of online attention seems to be given to some anonymous person calling himself Ronnie (see iCkEdMel’s YouTube channel or Ryan Upchurch’s YouTube channel). “Ronnie” claims to be in his 30s with three kids, says “his cousins” were at the party, but he often describes events, on the one hand, as if he were at the party himself, and on the other hand as if he’s just repeating the same set of details everyone’s heard from Sami.

For example, Ronnie says it was going to be a small party for the local kids who are getting ready to go away to college, but then it got a lot bigger than expected, with kids from Sacramento and the Bay Area showing up, and creepy adults with drugs showing up as well. Ronnie doesn’t seem to add anything beyond what Sami said in her various interviews.

So, what might be the reason for that? Is Ronnie a guy who’s trying to bolster Sami’s version of events for some nefarious reason — and therefore “sus”? Or is Ronnie just a guy who feels close to a major event and wants to talk about it anonymously on YouTube for attention?

A lot of people seem to think that Ronnie’s story exists to support Sami, and that this shows there’s something wrong with Sami’s story.

Well, Let’s Think It Through

Is there anything “wrong” with Sami’s version of events?

Is it true that Sami thought the older adults were creepers and they gave her a bad feeling (as she said in one interview), or is it true she was having a such a good time she wanted to stay longer at the party (as she said in another interview)? Can both those things be true?

Is it reslistic to think that Sami drank for hours with Kiely, but asked Kiely, a drunk 16-year-old, to drive her home anyway — but then she changed her mind because Kiely was too intoxicated to drive? Does that make sense?

Is it realistic to think that Sami got her own ride home, but left her too-intoxicated-to-drive friend behind to fend for herself? Does that make sense, when part of the narrative also involves a party that got out-of-control-big with hundreds of out-of-town strangers and creepy unknown men? Does that make sense? Does anyone do that to a friend?

Is Sami a terrible friend — or worse, does she know what happened to Kiely? A lot of people online are willing to jump to some horrible conclusions about what they think Sami might have done. Or, is she just a clueless drunk kid who made some of the worst choices a person can imagine — leaving a drunk friend to fend for herself — with horrible consequences?

Is Sami running the volunteer effort because she is a devoted friend? Or is it because she wants to stay close to the investigation (true crime shows teach us that “the killer” often insinuates himself into the investigation)?

Let’s suppose for two minutes that Sami is “the killer,” as so many people seem to want to suggest. Let’s suppose she had means, motive, and opportunity. Tell me, then: How did she get rid of a body and a car at a crowded party with hundreds of people there, and how did she keep both the body and the car hidden for 12 days?

Here’s My Best Guess

I don’t know what happened to Kiely and neither do you. I wish more than anything that she’ll come home safe and unharmed. I wish for a joyful reunion with her friends and family — but after 12 days, I just don’t think that’s happening.

If I had to guess, I’d say that Kiely, a 16-year-old girl who by definition had very little driving experience, a kid who planned to drive home drunk, late at night on treacherous roads, is in the reservoir, and so are her car and her phone.

Divers or no divers, sonar or no sonar, it’s really hard to find even a big object that’s gone into a 57-foot-deep body of muddy water.

If I had to guess, I’d say that Sami feels acutely guilty for leaving Kiely there at the party and is trying to make up for it by throwing herself into the rescue effort.

Will We Find Out Soon?

By the end of this week, Adventures with Purpose — a group that describes itself as “a search and recovery dive team dedicated to helping families of missing loved ones” will be on scene to help look for Kiely. They say they’ve been invited to help by one of the law enforcement agencies involved with the search.

If Kiely’s in that reservoir, I hope they find her soon, to give the family some final answers.

If Kiely’s in that reservoir, I hope the Internet ghouls will feel ashamed at how much pleasure and entertainment they got from this tragedy.

If you know anything about what happened to Kiely, please let someone know: