If Steven Avery’s story is best summed up as Making a Murderer, Investigation Discovery’s true crime documentary series about a group of six Chillicothe, Ohio women who went missing across a year-long time period might best be titled Making Victims.



The series, actually titled The Vanishing Women, is a six-part documentary that premiered in June, and details the stories of the troubled women whose disappearances from the 20,000 population Southern Ohio town began in 2014.

The women had some unfortunate things in common — drug issues, past or present, for all — as well as histories that, for some, included physical and sexual abuse, and prostitution. Some of the women knew each other, too, and among the many theories posited in the series is that their common problems might have led to common acquaintances who could be involved in their disappearances. The possibility of a serial killer is also a theory batted around during local authorities’ investigations of the cases, though a very recent development — the July 15 conviction of a man accused of murdering one of the women — may mean that theory is less likely true.

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Another universal, and the most compelling, feature of the series: the honest, but respectful portrayals of the women, two of whom are still missing. The victims’ families speak to producers about their lives, and no sugarcoating is involved as they detail their troubled pasts. But while putting the victim on trial is too often associated with cases like these, the producers allow the families to try to paint full, if complicated, portraits of their loved ones.

Single mother of two Tiffany Sayre had some painful, abuse-filled years in her early childhood, her father, aunt, and grandmother recall in The Vanishing Women; that turned around when her mother signed over custody to her father. But when Tiffany began to look older than she was as a teen, older men started to notice, and childhood issues she hadn’t dealt with begat years of unhappiness and struggle that included drugs and prostitution.

Sayre, 26, had met and begun dating a military veteran who was trying to help her get her life back on track, and her drug issues under control via rehab, but her family says he died unexpectedly from complications from an injury he sustained while on active duty, and his death sent Sayre on a downward spiral.

She was reported missing on May 11, 2015, and her body was found a little more than a month later in a drainage culvert 30 miles outside of Chillicothe.

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The rest of the story:

The Other Victims

Tameka Lynch, a 30-year-old mother of three, whose brother Chris says she became addicted to pain medication she began using to treat Lupus. Unable to continue at her job, Lynch and her family were evicted from their home, and she began to work as a prostitute to support her addiction. Lynch was reported missing May 20, 2014 by her husband (who hadn’t seen her for four days prior to that), and her dead body was found in a creek, 20 miles outside Chillicothe, on June 29, 2014.

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Charlotte Trego, a 27-year-old mother of two who was friends with Lynch, and, according to rumors that were never proven true, had attended a party with Lynch shortly before her disappearance. Trego, who’d told her mother she wanted to go to rehab while also sharing news about a “weird date” she’d gone on, was reported missing shortly thereafter, on May 20, 2014. Trig remains missing.