Going West: True Crime — The Journalist Who Vanished

What is the podcast about?

Going West: True Crime is a true crime podcast hosted by Daphne Woolsoncroft and Heath Merryman that focuses on missing-persons cases, suspicious disappearances, and unsolved crimes — many of them set against the vast, isolated landscapes of the American West. The show has built a catalogue of more than 500 episodes, covering a wide range of victims and circumstances, from rural communities to urban centers across the region. Distributed via Simplecast, an AdsWizz company, the podcast is available on Apple Podcasts, iHeart, Amazon Music, and other major podcast platforms, making it accessible to a broad national and international audience.

Among the show's most compelling episodes is episode 120, titled "Keith Reinhard // 120", released on May 12, 2021. The episode examines the baffling and still-unresolved disappearance of Keith Reinhard, a journalist from Chicago who moved to a tiny mountain mining town in Colorado in June 1988 and subsequently vanished without a trace. The case has never been solved, no body has ever been recovered, and no perpetrator has ever been identified — making it exactly the kind of haunting cold case that defines the Going West: True Crime catalogue.

The case behind the podcast

Keith Reinhard was a Chicago-based journalist who, in June 1988, made the dramatic decision to leave his life in one of America's largest cities and relocate to a small, remote Colorado mining town nestled in the mountains. The reasons for this move remain unclear. What is clear is that Reinhard arrived in the town and then, at some point during that same month, disappeared entirely.

No body was ever found. No clear motive for foul play was ever established by the available public record, and no individual was ever charged or prosecuted in connection with his disappearance. The episode description and the episode's transcript record indicate that while the hosts raise the possibility that Reinhard may have died — whether by accident, misadventure, or the hand of another person — the case remains formally open and unresolved.

The terrain of the Colorado Rockies is famously unforgiving: deep mountain valleys, abandoned mine shafts, dense forests, and extreme seasonal weather make it entirely plausible that a person could vanish and never be recovered. Whether Reinhard fell victim to the landscape, to another person, or to circumstances entirely his own, remains a question the podcast poses without a definitive answer — because, to this day, there is none.

The case type is classified as a missing-persons case with possible foul play, though no verdict or conviction exists in the public record associated with this episode.

The host and the production

Going West: True Crime is co-hosted by Daphne Woolsoncroft and Heath Merryman, who together guide listeners through detailed case narratives, weaving together background research, timeline reconstruction, and reflective commentary on the human stories behind the headlines. The hosts' approach balances journalistic rigor with empathy for victims and their families — a style that has helped the show sustain well over 500 episodes across multiple years of production.

The show is technically hosted and distributed through Simplecast, an AdsWizz company, one of the podcast industry's established infrastructure providers. This distribution backbone ensures the show appears consistently across all major listening platforms. Beyond the Keith Reinhard episode, the show's catalogue demonstrates remarkable breadth: other episodes have covered cases as varied as the disappearance of Lauren Cho (episode 151) and the case of Chance Englebert (episode 307), illustrating the hosts' commitment to covering a wide spectrum of missing-persons and true crime stories from across the region.

The show's longevity — reflected in an episode count that has surpassed 500 — speaks to a consistent production schedule and a dedicated team capable of sustaining output at a high volume while maintaining the case-specific research that the genre demands.

Reception

Going West: True Crime is actively listed and distributed across all major podcast platforms, including Apple Podcasts, iHeart, and Amazon Music, which reflects sustained institutional confidence in the show's audience reach. The presence of the show on iHeart's podcast network alongside its Apple Podcasts and Amazon Music availability indicates that the show has secured broad platform relationships typically associated with podcasts that have demonstrated consistent listener demand.

The source materials available for this catalogue entry do not include verified review scores, awards, or documented critical assessments specific to the Keith Reinhard episode or the show as a whole. What the distribution footprint does confirm is that Going West: True Crime continues to publish new episodes regularly, maintains active listings across multiple premium platforms, and has accumulated a back catalogue of sufficient depth and variety to sustain audience interest over many years.

For a show focused on missing-persons cases — a sub-genre of true crime that can be harder to sustain than murder cases because the narrative often lacks resolution — the show's continued growth is itself a marker of audience loyalty and editorial effectiveness.

The case today

As of the time of publication, the disappearance of Keith Reinhard remains unsolved. No remains have been recovered. No perpetrator has been named or charged. The case sits in the long, quiet ledger of American cold cases: a journalist who left a major city for an isolated mountain town and was never heard from again.

The Going West: True Crime episode dedicated to Reinhard's disappearance represents one of the few sustained public examinations of the case, and it is possible that listener engagement with the episode has kept the case alive in public consciousness in the years since its May 2021 release. Whether that renewed attention will ever translate into new leads, new witnesses, or a formal resolution remains unknown.

For now, Keith Reinhard's story is exactly what Going West: True Crime specializes in: a life interrupted, a trail gone cold, and a question that the mountains of Colorado have so far refused to answer.