Whatever Happened To Lori Jean Lloyd? (Early John Cosgrove Production)

[DarkDante]

In 1985, NBC aired a series of three unique specials hosted by Meredith Baxter-Birney and her husband David Birney entitled "Missing... Have You Seen This Person?" which focused largely upon the disappearances of missing children. The series was created by Terry Dunn Meurer and John Cosgrove who two years later would launch "Unsolved Mysteries". While the "Missing" series has been highly sought after by "Unsolved Mysteries" fans to this date it remains elusive as none of the three specials have re-surfaced since their original airing (at least to my knowledge).

That said, in one of my recent crawls through YouTube I was surprised to find a television special that pre-dates even the "Missing" series entitled "Whatever Happened To Lori Jean Lloyd?" It is a documentary largely filmed in 1979 spotlighting runaway adolescents framed around the disappearance of a fourteen year old girl from Kettering, Ohio in 1976. Upon viewing the credits of this documentary I was surprised to find the familiar name of John Cosgrove who shares a director's credit with Dan Gingold. If you haven't seen this documentary and in particular enjoy the early years of "Unsolved Mysteries", I think it's worth your time to view. Some of the production styles in this documentary foreshadow the work that Cosgrove would employ on "Unsolved Mysteries" around a decade later especially with some of the footage shot on the beach in Venice and many of the interviews conducted for the piece. The entire documentary definitely has the feel of a test run of what "Unsolved Mysteries" would become and I believe this might be Cosgrove's first foray into creating a documentary centered around a missing person.

This entire documentary running around 45 minutes in length has been uploaded to the aforementioned video site by whom I assume to be a member of Lori Jean Lloyd's family. The Cosgrove documentary starts around eleven minute mark as it is preceded by several contemporary Ohio news broadcasts on the film.

Sadly Lori Jean Lloyd has never been located and from the rudimentary research I have performed on her case, it seems that in the years since the release of the Cosgrove documentary, Lori Jean's family seems to have pivoted towards the theory that she was likely the victim of an abduction rather than a runaway which was the theory that is advanced in the documentary. Still, it is worth checking out if you want to see John Cosgrove take "Unsolved Mysteries" on a test run around the track around a decade before it's debut.

[cordwainer1453]

This movie used to be available to watch online, I don't know if it still is. According to a post on Lori's sister's Facebook page, (which doesn't seem to be available anymore), they actually found Lori's body in Kentucky shortly after she went missing, but they had trouble getting testing to confirm it was her.

[cordwainer1453]

The reason this documentary was made was because someone in Lori's family had seen a movie made by this company and saw someone in the background who looked like her. They then contacted the film company who created this. It is unknown who the person in the background was that looked like Lori.