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NJ Reporter Still Missing Nearly 30 Years After Investigating Underground Vampire Community
Single mother Susan Walsh was last seen walking from her Nutley, New Jersey, apartment to use a payphone. She remains missing to this day.
A freelance reporter from the Tri-State area vanished without a trace, a decades-old case with a handful of motives and still no explanation.
Susan Walsh was 36 when living with her preteen son in a rundown, brick apartment in Nutley, New Jersey, less than 10 miles north of Newark and about an hour’s drive northwest of Manhattan, according to The Doe Network. Her head-scratching 1996 disappearance became tabloid fodder for media outlets contemporaneously focusing on Walsh’s substance abuse history and her moonlighting as an exotic dancer, which loved ones said could be why authorities didn’t solve her case sooner.
"She did not decide to freaking go off and not be coming back," Walsh’s brother, Arthur Merchant, told Bergen, New Jersey’s The Record in 2020.
From Walsh’s investigative journalistic work — which included deep dives into the Russian Mob, illegal strip club operations, and vampire subculture — to suspicious stalkers and drugs, here’s everything to know about the disappearance of Susan Walsh.
The circumstances surrounding Susan Walsh’s disappearance
Walsh lived in a Washington Street apartment upstairs from her estranged husband, Mark Walsh, the brother of famed Eagles musician Joe Walsh, according to The Record. Loved ones reported that on July 16, 1996, Walsh left her son with his father and walked down the road to use a pay phone, promising to be back in 30 minutes, according to a September 8, 1996 article by The Record.
It appeared she had plans to return, as she left behind her purse, keys, and beeper. She was also enrolled in a Masters writing program at New York University, per The Doe Network.
During the missing persons’ investigation, Bell Atlantic cited “limited records” for why it couldn’t be determined whether Walsh placed or received any calls from the pay phone on the day she vanished, per the 1996 archive.
Years later, Nutley Detective John Rhein said in a 2008 episode of Unsolved Mysteries that investigators looked into several witnesses’ claims that Walsh climbed into a limousine when she disappeared, but the lead fizzled out.
In 2006, the New York Post reported that Mark Walsh was not considered a suspect in the case, though he allegedly refused to let investigators perform forensic tests at the apartment.
Susan Walsh's investigation into the underground vampire community
Walsh was a freelance writer who’d written a handful of articles for The Village Voice. Friend and fellow Village Voice journalist James Ridgeway confirmed that Walsh previously worked as an exotic dancer, which helped her land an assignment digging into the Russian Mob in New Jersey and their operations of sex-trafficking minor immigrants through strip clubs.
She continued to dance to support her son, Ridgeway told Unsolved Mysteries, having struggled to make ends meet. According to The Doe Network, Walsh occasionally worked at seedy strip clubs, which attracted a sordid cast of characters.
“Susan would say she was like an addict, and the whole sex business was kind of like an addiction, and she was trying to break this addiction,” said Ridgeway.
The publication helped Walsh receive an even amount of praise and threats, and though theories surrounding the Russian Mob swirled around the investigation, no leads came to fruition.
Soon after tackling the subject of organized crime, Walsh was onto another story: vampire subculture.
“She was very intellectual,” friend and filmmaker Jill Morley told The Record in 2020. “She wrote some dark stuff, and she was fascinated with subcultures.”
According to Ridgeway, The Village Voice declined to run her vampire-themed piece, citing a lack of objectivity. Walsh also began dating a man from the culture who claimed to be undead.
“She believed a lot of the things that these guys were telling her, about how there were secret murders and so on and so forth in the vampire world,” said Ridgeway. “She would come and say to me, ‘I met these two guys, and they got this van, and it’s very scary, and I don’t know whether I should go in their van.’ So, I said, ‘Hey look, don’t go in the van, because they might not be vampires, you know.'”
Morley told Unsolved Mysteries about her last conversation with Walsh just 48 hours before Walsh disappeared.
“She said she had bronchitis, emphysema, and an ulcer,” Morley said. “She said she’d been in the hospital twice that week. She talked about her mood swings and being depressed and about just holding on to live.”
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Theories about Susan Walsh's disappearance
Despite theories related to Walsh’s work in investigative journalism and the adult entertainment industry, no one was closer to finding Susan Walsh.
Friends and relatives wondered if her history of substance abuse and mental health issues factored into her sudden absence. She was reportedly in the throes of a downward spiral at the time of her disappearance, and relapsed after maintaining 12 years of sobriety, according to The Doe Network.
Arthur Merchant told The Record in 2020 that he learned Walsh “was losing the battle with her addiction” in 1995, months before she vanished.
Not only did Walsh begin drinking, but she reportedly began abusing Xanax, which was initially prescribed to treat her depression, per The Record. The Doe Network lists Walsh as having manic depression and past suicide attempts.
Merchant detailed two phone conversations he had with his sister weeks before she vanished, according to The Record. In them, Walsh seemed “out of it” and “distracted,” speaking disjointly about taking a trip to Las Vegas to work for the government and plans to watch the sitcom Roseanne.
Jill Morley, who’d interviewed Walsh for her documentary, Stripped, captured Walsh admitting to relapsing and allegedly having a stalker on video, according to The Record. The Doe Network reports Walsh was reportedly off her medication and living with increasing paranoia.
“I knew she wasn’t in good shape when I saw her,” Morley recalled to The Record.
In 1996, Floyd Merchant — who passed away in 2013 — said he suspected his daughter’s disappearance was mob-related. Friend and journalist James Ridgeway told Unsolved Mysteries that he wondered if she died of a drug overdose. Others believe it was related to the vampire subculture and/or the man she dated within that underworld.
However, Det. Rhein had another theory when he spoke to Unsolved Mysteries.
“I believe Susan Walsh is alive,” he said. “For some unknown reason to me at this time, she opted to leave her family and home, which she has a perfect right to do.”
Twenty-eight years later, Susan Walsh’s whereabouts remain unknown.
Where is the Susan Walsh case now?
In 2020, Arthur Merchant sued the Nutley Police Department for records related to his sister’s case. The police department claimed they were exempt from the state’s open records act because Walsh’s case was still active, according to the Law Journal.
Merchant, represented by Hackensack, New Jersey attorney Alan Peyrouton, successfully challenged the P.D., and in 2022, Superior Court Judge Bridget Stecher ruled the police department was “not actively investigating this matter.”
“I know she had someone in her life who identified as a vampire. I don’t know if he drank human blood,” said Peyrouton. “It smears who she was. What do her proclivities have to do with the fact that she disappeared? That’s one of the reasons we wanted to get the records.”
Morley, siding with loved ones that media placed too great of an emphasis on Walsh’s lifestyle, reminded reporters that Walsh “was a mom” and a “brilliant writer.”
“There’s a lot of rumors and theories,” Peyrouton continued. “She had a fascinating life. She was also a published author, a very intelligent woman, and also a mother.”
Susan Walsh was last seen in Nutley, New Jersey, on July 16, 1996. She wore a black tank dress, black sandals, and a gold ring with a black stone, according to NAMUS (The National Missing and Unidentified Persons System). She is 5 feet, 6 inches tall, and weighed about 110 to 120 lbs. at the time of her disappearance. She had bleached blond hair, a scar on her right wrist, and a distinctive New Jersey accent.
Anyone with information can contact the Nutley Police Department.
