Dear Fellow Traveler,
In March of 2009, on the 13th, in Little Creek, Alabama, Chloe Michaels was reported missing when she didn’t come home that afternoon from her daily walk in the park.
The disappearance shook the small town, since it was the first disappearance in the past 30 years.
Chloe Michaels was an 18 year old highschool student just a few months short of graduating, identified as an average build Caucasian girl with close cut brown hair and amber eyes. She was last seen wearing a yellow t-shirt with a white long sleeve underneath, torn blue jeans, and beaten up black converse sneakers.
Chloe was reported to be suffering from a slight case of tourette's syndrome in the form of a “Click Click,” sound she would make with her tongue at random, which earned her the nickname, “Click Click Chloe”, in school, as well as past head trauma from an early age, causing her to be slow minded, and has been reported to have a few behavioral quirks.
The pictures she posted to her facebook, and the captions in the posts as well as being very accurately timed when posting or arriving somewhere, always on a 0 or a 5. This was an impulsive action that had been common and well known to everyone who knew her. Chloe was only ever late if something happened to interrupt her punctual behavior. This was the reason her parents made a police report 6 hours after she failed to return home. Chloe was always home on time if not 5 minutes late, she was meticulous like that, according to her parents.
Despite having a cell phone, Chloe didn’t use it much and often forgot it, but always called her parents if something happened. Chloe was well behaved, never causing trouble for her parents in any way, not even as a joke. She also didn’t seem to mind her nickname, as mean as it was intended, because she used it as her Facebook user name, and often typed, “Click, Click,” at the end of a text message or comment.
The day she was reported missing, Chloe’s cell phone was found on the sidewalk that went through the park, with “Click, Click,” typed in a drafted text to her parents at 5 p.m on the dot, giving investigators a clear idea of when events took place.
The parents, Amy Michaels and her husband, Thomas Michaels, stated in a report that Chloe liked going to the park after school, to take pictures of the trees and flowers growing around the park, but would always be home two hours later on the dot, and if she would be late for whatever reason, she would text or call.
Despite being a well behaved and bright student, Chloe was not a popular girl in her school. She was often teased for her slowness and her disorder, but was still a happy teen, going through her highschool days with decent grades, not letting the teasing get to her or cause hindrance in school work.
Teachers reported that despite her slow processing, Chloe never caused trouble despite often being referred to as an “Oddball, girl” and was a hard worker, trying to make up for what she lacked. Neither did she purposely make enemies, even when other students took her bag or wrote on her locker, young Chloe never seemed bothered or even seemed to notice. In fact the only thing she would get defensive of was a digital camera she was always seen carrying. But because Chloe never reported other students and the bullying never seemed to escalate past teasing, not much was done by the school staff to stop it. Teachers reported that the other students were never cruel to Chloe in a way they saw as concerning, especially since the student herself never bothered with acknowledging it.
Within the next few days, police ran with a theory of either a lost persons case, or even a run away, despite her parents insistence that Chloe would never do that. Possiblities of foal play or murder was not a main concern just yet. Some even speculated at the time that she might have run away when confronted outside of school by one of her bullies, opting to run away and then getting lost when a witness spotted a few being near where Chloe was last seen.
That was until less than 4 days after her disappearance, her decomposing body was discovered in the trunk of an abandoned car off the road a few miles from the park where she was last seen. Though it was decomposing, there were still obvious signs of assault on her body, as well as a gash at the back of her head, investigators concluded that Chloe had been attacked, and hit her head. But the biggest surprise found on sight was the now busted digital camera that was caught in the infamous “Death Grip” by the victim, which took a lot of effort to dislodge without causing damage to the evidence.
Upon further investigation and an autopsy, it was revealed that a few scratch marks on her arms showed bits of nail polish, and a few strands of long blonde hair encased in Chloe's fingers, as well as a used bottle of chapstick near the crime scene, all pointing to that the assailant was a girl, possibly a school mate. It was also revealed the poor girl could have survived her wound had she been taken to the hospital, and instead the cause of death was suffocation from being thrown into a trunk for a full day.
The police had been rather light with the large assumption that Chloe may have just ran away, but now that her body was found instead, all the stops were finally pulled out, and every woman and teenage girl with blonde hair was questioned by police to narrow down the suspect pool, and soon, police were lead to, Katherine Grey, also known as Kitty, a highschool student and classmate of Chloe in the same year.
Kitty was seen near the park hours before Chloe was reported missing, and denied knowing anything about the case, and the blond hair found was too damaged from constant bleaching to be connected to Kitty.
But the police didn’t give up, and for months kept questioning Kitty’s friends and classmates, gathering evidence and trying to build a case. The investigators on the case learned that, apparently, Kitty had a chip on her shoulder towards Chloe. According to a few students, often instigated the teasing, but never personally got involved. The students couldn’t answer as to why Kitty allegedly hated Chloe though. There were a few theories floating around that Kitty did it for attention, since Chloe was often given, due to her needing extra help for teachers or other students. It also seemed that Kitty was deeply irritated by Chloe’s constant brush off of the harassment, as though it were nothing, subsequently, ignoring Kitty and her group.
With this information, those investigating the case were 100% sure that Kitty was the cause of Chloe’s death, but didn’t have any direct evidence to arrest her and take her to trial.
Many of the Little Creek residents could not believe a teenage girl could kill another, and the Grey family threatened to sue the police department for harassment. Once a police officer also reported seeing a smug look on Kitty’s face as he and another left the Grey family's house.
On paper, Kitty Grey was a smart student, and never got into trouble, but once looking through her facebook posts, it showed the hidden venom in her text posts. Kitty was far from being an angel, but everything she posted was only passive aggressive, and He-Said-She-Said statements by the few classmates that spoke up.
And soon, with no proof, the case started to go cold, much to the horror of Chloe’s parents, who begged police to arrest the person who hurt their daughter.
That was until a set of pictures surfaced on Chloe’s personal facebook.
The pictures were shown to be slightly glitched and at odd angles, but the pictures still showed clear enough, Kitty Grey and two others looking down, their legs and part of the old car Chloe was found in, than another picture of the three at the opening of the cars trunk, getting ready to close it. All the pictures taken from what could be assumed as Chloe’s perspective.
Whether these were some of Chloe’s last moments, or caused by lucky glitches in the broken camera, it couldn’t be said. The biggest question was who posted the pictures. The question was overshadowed by the fact the police now had evidence of Kitty’s wrong doing, and the involvement of two other classmates.
The two classmates later confessed to helping Kitty hide Chloe’s body, but denied having anything to do with her death, unaware during the interrogation that Chloe had actually been alive when they hid her in the trunk. Kitty refused to confess or say anything regarding Chloe’s death or hiding her body, and instead claimed that the Michels were harassing in an attempt to change the subject. According to Kitty, Chloe’s parents were harassing her daily by sending “Click, Click” to her phone's text messages as well as replying to all her posts the same way, using Chloe’s facebook account.
The Michels later denied the accusations in court.
During the trial, Kitty denied everything presented firmly, even when photo evidence was shown, when asked about her involvement with Chloe, Kitty denied having anything to do with the bullying in school and passive aggressive comments on facebook.
It was speculated that Kitty thought if she denied it enough, they would believe her, since everyone already couldn’t believe a teen could kill another teen. This wasn’t the case though.
The jury came to the agreement that Kitty Grey was cause of the disappearance and death of Chloe Michels, but because they couldn’t prove murder or manslaughter, Kitty and the two others’ teenagers were not given the max penelty, but due to them all being 18, were still charged as adults.
It was never revealed where the pictures that were used to convict Kitty came from, and logs showed the Michels had never logged onto the account, nor had either ever texted her phone, since Chloe’s phone had been in evidence the whole time, but it was undeniable that those pictures indeed came from Chloe’s damaged camera. During the trial a tech analyst had gotten a lucky break and managed to later pull the exact same pictures from the salvaged data.
After the trial was over and all three were sent to prison, one final picture was posted to facebook.
It was a picture of Chloe smiling into the camera, with the caption “Click, Click,” below. Which was odd, because while she loved taking pictures, and had a wonderful smile, Chloe hated having her own picture taken.
And every once in a while, someone comments on pictures posted, with “Click, Click” using Chloe’s now deactivated account.
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