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I've been begging people to listen to me. I've been literally begging. I'm so frustrated that

this 20-year-old beautiful mom and her four-year-old son can just vanish. And nothing's done. And nobody's arrested.

Nothing's done. Nobody does any searches. And life just goes on. I want this case to be solved.

So I want the whole world to know about it. Nobody has ever talked about them disappearing. I want to know what happened to them.

I want to know why nobody has done anything. Why nothing's been done. And why people say they know what happened. But still nothing's been done.

In 2002, a young woman disappeared from a small town in northern Arkansas called Salem. It may have been September, but some people say it was later in the year.

She wouldn't be reported missing for many months, or maybe even years. Her four-year-old son also vanished. But missing person's flyers note that he vanished from Missouri. And the date that he was last seen is uncertain.

Supposedly, there is a photo of the child that his date stamped well after September 1st. But nobody knows for sure.

In fact, no one seems to know when or where mother or son were last seen, or who was the last to see them. Nearly 20 years have passed since a young mom and her son were last seen alive. And then they were seemingly forgotten.

Today's episode brings into focus the stories of two people who appeared to simply stop existing. And it seemed like no one cared until now.

I'm Marissa, and from Wondery, this is episode 272 of The Vanished. Angela Mack and Thomas Mikey were two's story.

Twenty-year-old Angela Mack and her four-year-old son, Thomas R.2, or Mikey as his loved ones called him, disappeared sometime in 2002.

Over the past five years and over 270 episodes, we have learned that some stories are more difficult to cover than others.

Some stories come our way with a detailed timeline to follow. This is not one of those cases. Trying to pull together even the most basic information has been difficult.

Angela Mack or Angie wasn't born in Salem, Arkansas, but she ended up there when she was a teenager, a world away from the only life she had ever known in Escondido, California.

Life in Arkansas shared nothing in common with the coastal southern California city nestled in a valley outside the busy metropolis of San Diego.

Escondido had a population of over 130,000 people in the year 2000, while Salem, Arkansas had 1% of that estimated population of just about 1600 people.

You might imagine how much a young woman's life would change with such a drastic move, but no one could predict that it would alter the course of Angela's life forever.

For this story, we talked to Angela's brother Joe. We asked him why the family made such a drastic move across the country.

My grandfather bought land. Well right outside of Salem, a little town called Glencoe, about 88 years back in, I think it was the late 70s, maybe early 80s, because Arkansas was one of the poorest states in the union.

And my grandfather owned his own company, made really good money. So he decided since the cost of living and expenses were so low in Arkansas, that's where he wanted to retire.

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