The State Stories

The State Stories We cover real stories that matter true crime, historical events, strange cases, and mysteries explained.

Dallas Pokornik quit his airline job in 2019. Then he made a fake ID, told 3 US airlines he was a pilot, and flew hundre...
08/29/2026

Dallas Pokornik quit his airline job in 2019. Then he made a fake ID, told 3 US airlines he was a pilot, and flew hundreds of times for free over 4 years. He even asked to sit in the cockpit. They never caught on. He was arrested in Panama.

After leaving his Toronto airline job, Dallas Pokornik allegedly forged a fake employee ID and used it to claim staff travel benefits on three US airlines from 2020 to 2024.

Prosecutors say he flew hundreds of times for free, at one point requesting the cockpit jump seat reserved for off-duty pilots, despite holding zero pilot credentials.

Aviation security experts say they cannot explain how multiple ID layers across three carriers all failed to catch him. He now faces up to 20 years in prison.

08/29/2026

In September 2012, 18-year-old UF freshman Christian Aguilar vanished after Best Buy CCTV captured him with his high-school friend Pedro Bravo.

Bravo’s ex-girlfriend had begun dating Christian. His story kept changing from “we only talked” to admitting they fought. Police then discovered he had bought a shovel and duct tape days earlier.

After a 22-day search, Christian was found in a shallow grave. His blood was in Bravo’s car, and Bravo had searched how to drug someone and dispose of a body.

Convicted in 2014, he died in prison days before facing new charges in 2025.

Jason Jolkowski was 19, a shy, quiet young man living with his parents and younger brother in Omaha’s Benson neighborhoo...
08/29/2026

Jason Jolkowski was 19, a shy, quiet young man living with his parents and younger brother in Omaha’s Benson neighborhood while attending a radio broadcasting program at a nearby community college. On the morning of June 13, 2001, he set out walking seven blocks from his house toward his former high school, planning to meet a coworker for a ride to his job at a local restaurant.

He never arrived. Surveillance cameras confirmed he never made it onto the high school’s campus, though the route between his home and the school ran through quiet residential streets with little traffic. His bank account, cell phone, and belongings all sat untouched afterward, and his last paycheck was left waiting at work. There were no signs he had planned to leave.

Because Jason was over 18, police initially treated the case as a voluntary runaway, delaying a serious investigation for critical early days. By the time officers began interviewing neighbors and searching the area, ten days had already passed with no evidence collected. His parents’ fight to change how missing adult cases are handled led to the creation of Jason’s Law, now used statewide in Nebraska to better track and report the missing.

More than two decades later, the Omaha Police Department still lists Jason’s case as active, and continues fielding tips through the department and local Crime Stoppers.

Abigail Bernstein was 30, living a nomadic, off-the-grid lifestyle with her two young sons, Koa Kai and Kush Kohole, age...
08/29/2026

Abigail Bernstein was 30, living a nomadic, off-the-grid lifestyle with her two young sons, Koa Kai and Kush Kohole, ages 9 and 6 at the time. The boys were not enrolled in school, and Abigail had reportedly cut ties with much of her family in the years before 2022. On October 12, 2022, the three were last seen at the Ala Wai Boat Harbor in Honolulu, Hawaii, preparing to board a boat for what was meant to be a year-long sea voyage with a captain Abigail had met online.

They never returned. Abigail’s cell phone service was terminated in November 2022, roughly a month after they boarded the boat, and no confirmed contact with the family has surfaced since. The FBI has said Abigail had ties to the Big Island, Kauai, and Maui, along with connections to Florida, Michigan, and Pennsylvania, leaving investigators uncertain whether the family stayed together, separated, or never left Hawaii’s waters at all.

The FBI did not publicly appeal for help locating the family until mid-2024, nearly two years after they vanished, a delay that has drawn criticism from those following the case. Investigators have not identified the boat captain by name or clarified what became of him after the voyage was meant to begin.

More than three years later, Abigail, Koa, and Kush remain missing. Koa would now be 14, Kush 11. No trace of the boat, its captain, or the family has ever been recovered.

On 26 March 2020, Owen Harding, 16, argued with his mother Stella. COVID lockdown meant he couldn’t see his girlfriend, ...
08/29/2026

On 26 March 2020, Owen Harding, 16, argued with his mother Stella. COVID lockdown meant he couldn’t see his girlfriend, 280 miles away in Yorkshire.

He left home at 6pm to watch the sunset at Telscombe Cliffs. CCTV captured him nearing the cliff path at 6:50pm.

His girlfriend was the last to hear his voice, at 6:23pm. He was never heard from again.

An oceanographer said the tide would have carried any body out to sea.

His phone later pinged in London. Owen Harding has never been found.

Liliana Moreno was 42, an architect living in Doral, Florida, with her 8-year-old daughter, Daniella. Liliana shared cus...
08/29/2026

Liliana Moreno was 42, an architect living in Doral, Florida, with her 8-year-old daughter, Daniella. Liliana shared custody of Daniella with the girl’s father, Gustavo Alfonso Castaño, a man she had never dated but maintained a cordial co-parenting relationship with for years. On May 30, 2016, Memorial Day, the two were seen together near a Home Depot in Hialeah. They were never seen again.

The next day, Liliana’s sister grew alarmed after learning Daniella had missed nearly a week of school and reported them missing. Police found their apartment locked, Liliana’s car still parked outside, and food left out on the stove. Her purse, passport, driver’s license, and credit cards were all inside, untouched. Investigators said the scene suggested the two had left in a hurry, and ruled out a voluntary disappearance almost immediately given what was left behind.

Castaño, the last person known to have seen them, became the sole person of interest. Liliana’s family said he had once kept Daniella’s existence secret from his wife, and pushed for years for federal investigators to bring charges. For nearly a decade, none came.

In late 2024, prosecutors finally indicted Castaño on one federal count of kidnapping resulting in death, and he was arrested days later. The indictment did not disclose why investigators believe Liliana and Daniella are dead, or what evidence led to the charge. Liliana’s brother, who moved from Colombia to keep pushing the case forward, says the family is still waiting for the full truth, even after an arrest finally came.

In 2001, 35-year-old Early, Iowa mother Tracey Richter shot her 20-year-old neighbor Dustin Wehde 9 times – then planted...
08/29/2026

In 2001, 35-year-old Early, Iowa mother Tracey Richter shot her 20-year-old neighbor Dustin Wehde 9 times – then planted a handwritten journal on his body to frame her ex-husband for the killing. She walked free for nearly a decade.

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Hailey Dunn was 13, a cheerleader and eighth grader in Colorado City, Texas, living with her mother and her mother’s boy...
08/28/2026

Hailey Dunn was 13, a cheerleader and eighth grader in Colorado City, Texas, living with her mother and her mother’s boyfriend, Shawn Adkins. On December 27, 2010, two days after Christmas, she told her mother she was headed to a friend’s house. She never arrived, and the friend said she had no idea Hailey was coming.

A massive search stretched across West Texas for months, at one point leading cadaver dogs to a landfill seventy miles away. Hailey was gone for nearly three years before her remains were found near Lake J.B. Thomas in March 2013. An autopsy determined she had been struck in the head with a blunt object.

Adkins, who had been named a person of interest from the earliest days of the case, was not arrested until June 2021, a full decade after Hailey disappeared. Prosecutors said the case relied heavily on cell phone data and text messages, but in June 2023, the charges against him were dismissed without prejudice, meaning they can be refiled. Officials cited unresolved questions about forensic testing and conflicting timelines pulled from Hailey’s and Adkins’ phones.

In January 2025, Texas Rangers officially took over the cold case. Hailey would be in her late twenties now. Her family has spent fifteen years demanding the justice that has, so far, kept slipping out of reach.

08/28/2026

When Donald Lee Widener died, nobody in his family wanted his ashes. Not his brother. Not his kids who suggested the gutter or the toilet. So his wife Marsha filmed herself taking them to a dumpster instead. “He was a garbage man,” she said. “We’re sending him back to the landfill.”

Marsha opened the video by saying “I know you’re not going to understand why I’m doing this” then held the black box up to the camera so viewers could read the label: Donald Lee Widener. She had called every member of his family first, she said every one of them refused. As she untied the bag of ashes, she began narrating: “This little bit right here is for all the times he kicked me in the head. Yep he put my head through a window.”

Partway through, the ash dust blew back into her face. She waved it away and said simply: “He’s getting on my face nasty bastard, nasty.” She then dropped some ashes on the ground, stamped them into the dirt, and said: “Now he’s all smashed into the dirt.” She finished by emptying the last of the bag into the dumpster and declared: “Adios, amigo.”

The video, originally posted in 2017, resurfaced in 2020 and went viral dividing viewers sharply between those who found it cathartic, particularly survivors of domestic abuse who said it felt validating, and those who argued human remains deserve dignity regardless of who the person was in life. Marsha’s account of the abuse has not been independently verified through court records.

Don Widener spent his working life hauling trash to a landfill. His wife made sure he ended up there!

Father’s Day 1969, Great Smoky Mountains National Park.The family made this annual trip. Dennis ran into the bushes and ...
08/28/2026

Father’s Day 1969, Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

The family made this annual trip. Dennis ran into the bushes and never came back.

What followed was the largest search in park history 1,400 people, the National Guard, the U.S. Army.

Investigators found footprints near a stream, one foot bare, one shod. A shoe and sock were recovered.

In 1985, a ginseng harvester claimed he had spotted a child’s skeletal remains in the park years earlier, too afraid to report it. They were never found.

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