Unsolved Mysteries volume 3 recap guide: Episodes 1-9 explained

Unsolved Mysteries season 3, episode 8, “The Ghost in Apartment 14”

“The Ghost in Apartment 14” begins as a conventional “paranormal” entry into Unsolved Mysteries volume 3 but quickly spirals into something far more insidious related to an infamous kidnapping case involving survivor Colleen Stan and convicted sex predator Cameron Hooker.

The episode begins by introducing us to Jodi Foster. On January 31, 2000, Jodi and her young daughter Hannah moved into apartment 14 at the Walnut Garden Apartments in Chico, California. Not long after living there, Jodi started experiencing strange and unexplainable phenomena in her home. It began with her daughter’s pink shoes somehow ending up in the center of her bed each day. Then salt and pepper shakers started moving.

Jodi started waking up at 3:37 a.m., which many believe to be during the “witching hour.” She started experiencing vivid dreams showing a couple stalking and kidnapping a young woman. Then she witnessed Hannah talking to a ghost she would call “My Liz.”

On one particularly frightening night, Jodi returned home from dinner with Hannah to find the phone receiver on the ground and Hannah’s Ernie doll (the Sesame Street character) with a noose around its neck. Devastated, Jodi rushed out of her apartment and contacted the police, but they didn’t take her seriously. A neighbor told her that no one ever lived in apartment 14 for long.

The breaking point for Jodi and Hannah came when, on another night, all of the lights in the apartment came on in the middle of the night, followed by the Ernie doll going off in the closet despite not having any batteries in it, and numerous other creepy occurrences like the cabinets slamming shut and the television turning on by itself.

Within three months, Jodi and Hannah had moved out of apartment 14.

What happened to Marie Elizabeth Spannhake?

Decades before Jodi and Hannah Foster moved into apartment 14; the very same apartment was inhabited by Marie Elizabeth Spannhake, nicknamed “Marliz.” Marliz moved to Chico, California, with her fiancé in 1975 when she was just 19. On January 31, 1976, they got into an argument at a flea market, and Marliz took off on her own. She was later kidnapped by a couple, Cameron and Janice Hooker.

Within the span of about half a day, Cameron Hooker is believed to have tortured and eventually murdered her. Unfortunately, Marliz’s body was never found.

If the name Cameron Hooker sounds familiar, that might be because you’ve heard of the infamous “Girl in the Box” case. About one year after allegedly murdering Marliz, Cameron and Janice Hooker kidnapped a hitchhiker, 20-year-old Colleen Stan. Cameron kept Stan as a “sex slave” for seven years, often forcing her into a wooden box beneath his bed for up to 23 hours a day. Stan later escaped, and she has given many interviews since then recounting her story.

There are many documentaries, films, and books about Stan’s kidnapping, including how Cameron kept her docile with fears of “The Company.” This episode of Unsolved Mysteries focuses more on Marliz, though Stan’s case is undoubtedly important. For starters, Stan believes she saw a photo of Marliz inside the house that she would pass every time she went in and out of the box.

In November 1984, Janice Hooker went to the police and told them everything she could about what her husband had done to Marliz and Colleen in exchange for immunity. It was Janice who eventually helped Colleen escape captivity when she finally decided to leave Cameron. Janice was only 16 when she met Cameron.

But even though Janice detailed Marliz’s captivity and eventual murder, police have been unable to locate her body. The case went cold until investigator Kevin Hale started looking into potentially reopening it in 2008.

At the exact moment that Hale was opening the cold case, he received a call from Jodi Foster. Despite moving out of the Walnut Garden apartment, she continued having strange dreams, possibly about Marliz’s final moments. Years later, Jodi also realized that her daughter might have been communicating with Marliz’s ghost since the name “Marliz” does sound an awful lot like “My Liz.”

Jodi’s dreams began showing her numbers and letters, specifically “A17” and “35.76.” She provided Hale with that information.

Interestingly, there is a road labeled “A17” near Red Bluff where Cameron and Janice Hooker are believed to have taken Marliz’s body. Hale and Foster met up again in 2021, so Hale could tell her just how close her numbers were to the factual findings related to Marliz’s case.

Hale reveals that in 2010, when they started re-investigating Marliz’s case, they pinpointed a potential gravesite located 35.77 away from the Hooker house using mapping software. Even though they did not find Marliz’s body, it is a little eerie just how close Foster was to naming the accurate number.

Cameron Hooker went to trial in 1985 for kidnapping and torturing Colleen Stan. He was convicted and sentenced to 104 years in prison. But since the police never found Marliz’s body, they could not charge him with her homicide despite Janice’s information and Colleen claiming to have seen her picture in the house. As of 2022, Marliz is still considered a missing person, and it remains unclear exactly what happened to her.