Kortne Stouffer

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0:43Everything's either going to be okay. Or not. We are outgunned and we are outmanned. We have each other. FX is the bear. The final season. All episodes now streaming on Disney+. Voices for Justice is a podcast that uses adult language and discusses sensitive and potentially triggering topics, including violence, abuse, and murder. This podcast may not be appropriate for younger audiences. All parties are innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. Some names have been changed or omitted per their request or for safety purposes. Listener discretion is advised. My name is Sarah Turney, and this is Voices for Justice.

1:33Today I'm discussing the case of Courtney Stauffer. In the early morning hours of July 29, 2012, 21-year-old Courtney vanished from her apartment in Palmyra, Pennsylvania. But this wasn't a quiet night. There were people outside of her door. Arguments, noise complaints, police calls, neighbors who were awake and paying attention. But by the morning, Courtney was gone. This is the case of Courtney Stauffer. It's about 9pm on Saturday, July 8th, 2012, and 21-year-old Courtney Stauffer and her boyfriend, 19-year-old Brad Hare, are having some friends over at their apartment in Palmyra, Pennsylvania.

2:19They've been together for about a year and recently took the next step in their relationship by living together. so it's a really exciting time in both of their lives. But the party ends with the police breaking it up. Some reports say that there was a noise complaint, while others say that neighbors reported underage drinking after seeing people bringing in cases of beer. Either way, the Palmyra police respond, along with Lebanon County Adult Probation, who was there specifically for Brad. At this time, Brad was on house arrest for driving under the influence, So he's taken in for violating the terms of his probation.

2:58According to reporting by Leah Hall for Fox 43 News, out of the seven people in the apartment that night, Courtney was the only person who was of legal drinking age. By the end, outside of Brad, two people are given citations for drinking underage and the party's broken up. This left Courtney alone in the apartment for the night. So she calls her mom Wendy. Wendy says Courtney was very upset and concerned that Brad might go to prison for violating the terms of his probation. Courtney also tells her mom that she's pretty sure it was their neighbors who called the police specifically to get Brad arrested.

3:34It's a bad night. Courtney is very upset, and Wendy of course tries to comfort her and offers to have her come stay at her house for the night, but Courtney declines. Instead, she decides to go out and try to get her mind off of things. So she calls her older brother Ryan. She says she's had a rough day, she needs to unwind, and asks if he can go out with her that night. But Ryan isn't available. According to the Lebanon County District Attorney's official timeline, at 10.07pm she gets a text from her friend Cody Pruitt. He invited her to join him and their other friend Milton Rodriguez at a bar called The Gas Station Kitchen and Bar in Hummelstown, Pennsylvania.

4:14So Courtney makes the about 15-minute drive to join them, but after a while they decide it's time to go to another bar. Courtney leaves her car at the gas station bar, and their designated driver, Cody, drives Milton's car to take them to the 2nd Street area of Pennsylvania. This is about 20 minutes away, and it's essentially the main nightlife and bar hub in downtown Harrisburg. Of course, Courtney's still worried about Brad, she's talking about it, that's really just where she is mentally right now. Then, at about 1.50am, the group was at the hardware bar when Courtney approached a man named Arvard Brown.

4:51According to some accounts of this night, she confronts him about her belief that he'd broken into her apartment a few weeks before. She basically accuses him of stealing money and weed from her, which he denies. Most reporting says that Courtney really begins to argue more heavily with Arvard's girlfriend, though. Either way, this ends with security asking Courtney to leave the bar And at this time, she's separated from her friends The timeline is a little fuzzy, but they eventually leave the bar too And they meet up to grab pizza before calling it a night At about 2.45am, Cody drops off a couple that was also with them that night Then Milton at his home And finally takes Courtney back to her car at the gas station kitchen and bar According to the episode of Disappeared About Courtney She'd sobered up by this point.

5:40But Cody says that he still wants to make sure that she gets home okay. So he follows behind her as she drives back to her apartment in Palmyra. They get to Courtney's apartment at about 3am. Now, Cody doesn't go home at this point. He stays the night. But things don't settle down from here. What happened in the next few hours depends on who you ask. But by morning, one thing was undeniable. Courtney was missing. This episode of Voices for Justice is sponsored by HERS. Losing weight is one thing, but keeping it off is where it gets really frustrating. That's why Weight Loss by HERS now offers access to the FDA-approved Wegovy pill and the FDA-approved Wegovy pen.

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9:26In the early morning hours of Sunday, July 29th, 2012, 21-year-old Courtney Stauffer is just getting home from a pretty rough night. Her party was broken up, her boyfriend Brad was arrested for violating probation, and she was asked to leave after getting into a verbal altercation at a bar. But she does make it home safe to her apartment, accompanied by her friend Cody Pruitt. And the chaos of the night really just continues. At about 3 a.m., Courtney gets into a verbal altercation with her neighbors, Janice Reimenschneider, Rick Sheets, and Todd Saksak. She accuses them of calling the police on her and Brad, but Rick Sheets calls the police and reports that Courtney is threatening him.

10:09They get there at 3.15 a.m. And as you might expect, we get some conflicting stories here. Courtney tells the police that she was just out walking her dog Sheba when her neighbors came out of their respective apartments and began screaming at her. But they say that Courtney was the one who was being loud and unruly. Todd Saxack specifically tells police that Courtney also kicked him in the leg. But in the end, it seems that police believe that everyone is intoxicated and just tells them to all go home. They also warn them that if they're called back, someone is going to jail. So police leave the scene at 3.49 a.m.

10:49But not long after, at 4.11am, Todd Saxeck calls the police to report that Courtney was making threats toward him and other neighbors. He says he can hear her screaming, stomping, and slamming doors in her apartment. Police get back to the scene at 4.31am, where Saxeck tells them he believes Courtney is doing this on purpose to aggravate him and other neighbors. So the officers go to Courtney's apartment, but no one answers the door. They hear a dog barking and then quiet down. They knock again, and the dog barks again, but there's still no answer at the door. So they look through the patio door and a window to see what's going on.

11:30But they don't see anything. No sign of a struggle, nothing alarming. So they leave. But the matter wasn't over for Todd Saxack. According to the episode of Disappeared, he went back into his unit and left a voicemail for the landlord. He was described as sounding irate. And he demanded that they do something about Courtney. He allegedly says that if they won't, he will. And Todd is not ready to drop this. At 7.30am, he goes to the Palmyra Police Department to make a formal complaint against Courtney. He wants her charged for kicking him. And really around the same time, just before 8am, Cody says he's just waking up at Courtney's apartment.

12:14But he doesn't see Courtney anywhere. He calls out for her, but she doesn't answer. So he leaves. From there, he makes a purchase at a nearby store, which is captured by a surveillance video. Then he sends a text to Courtney saying, quote, Hey, what happened to you? End quote. But Courtney doesn't text back. Cody then goes to Milton Rodriguez's house. He still has his car. So he drops off Milton's car, picks up his own, then drives back to his house in the Hummelstown area to get ready for work. He texts Courtney again at 12.36pm and 1.58pm, but there's still no response. Now, around this same time, Courtney's grandfather and older brother Ryan are excited for their annual tradition of attending the local fair-slash-farm show.

13:02They've been going since they were little kids, and even showed their animals there when they were in the 4-H club. This isn't something Courtney would just forget about. So when she doesn't show, and she's not answering any calls or texts, her family is immediately concerned. Courtney's younger brother Austin was only 13 when she went missing, but in 2025 he spoke to Como News, and said that their mom Wendy and one of his brothers went to Courtney's apartment to see what's going on. When they get there, this is what they find. Courtney's car was still outside, with all of the windows rolled down.

13:37Then they see that her front door is wide open. The porch light is on, and inside they can hear Sheba barking. When they get inside, nothing is out of place. There's no sign of a struggle, and nothing seemed to be missing. But Sheba was there alone, and apparently for a while because they had an accident on the rug. Wendy says this is extremely odd because she walks Sheba all the time. I mean, we know that when Courtney got home from the bar, pretty much the first thing she did was take Sheba out. And just as an aside, I do think it's extremely worth noting that Sheba is a black lab and Courtney's childhood dog she got when she was eight.

14:21I mean, obviously, Sheba was technically a family dog. But between her and her siblings, Courtney was the one to take Sheba when she moved out. So this is definitely a huge red flag. And as they continue to go through the apartment, they see that Courtney's keys and shoes were left by the front door as usual, but the TV was on, and the air conditioning was left on full blast. Then they go into Courtney's bedroom. On the nightstand, they find her purse with money still inside, her cigarettes, and her cell phone, which was plugged in. When Wendy picked it up, she saw 18 missed calls. At this point, Wendy calls Courtney's father, Scott.

15:04They were divorced at this point, but after 19 years of marriage and five kids, they were committed co-parents. Scott comes over right away, and when he sees the missed calls on Courtney's phone, he ends up calling Cody, who basically recounts the entire night just as I told you. And at 2.42pm, he reported his daughter missing to the Palmyra Police Department. But, as we know happens all too often, they tell Courtney's parents to sit and wait to see if she'll come back. Finally, when Courtney was still gone on July 31st, both the Palmyra Police Department and Lebanon County detectives begin investigating.

15:44Courtney's apartment is closed off as they begin to process the scene. And then Wendy and Scott see something that concerned them. Todd, the neighbor who Courtney got into a fight with, was taking several trash bags out of his unit. They also said he wouldn't talk to them or make eye contact with them. See, the night slash morning that Courtney went missing wasn't the first time she'd had issues with her neighbors. According to statements from her family, she didn't really get along well with any of them, and there were noise complaints in the past. But Todd seemed to be the one that she had the most trouble with.

16:20She told people that he was creepy and that she didn't like him. And just a week before she disappeared, she told her mom that Todd had been videotaping her outside. So when they see Todd carrying all these trash bags, it definitely piques their interest And over the next few days and weeks, investigators do follow up Todd tells them that the trash bags were from a home improvement project He also lets the police search his home and vehicle In the end, Todd says that while he thought that Courtney was troublesome, he had nothing to do with her disappearance And the police have been clear that they've never found anything that points to him being involved.

17:02As far as the other two neighbors, they were also cooperative with investigators and allowed them to search their units as well. Ultimately, while police find no signs of a struggle or anything missing in Courtney's apartment, or around any of the units, they quickly consider her to be a victim of foul play. And of course, they want to talk to Cody Pruitt.

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18:50See fox.com for complete terms and conditions. As investigators are going down the list of people Courtney Stouffer interacted with before she went missing, of course, they want to talk to the person who last saw her, the man who stayed in her apartment that night, Cody Pruitt. And according to investigators, he's been cooperative. He says that after speaking with police, Courtney was still upset and confirms the neighbor's account of her yelling and stomping to bother them on purpose. But he says that he calmed her down and they just went to bed after that. And this is the detail that really sticks with me.

19:27When he woke up a few hours later, he says that he didn't check every room in the apartment, but he says that he just called out to Courtney, didn't get a response, and left. So Cody can't say for sure whether or not Courtney was even in the apartment. But from there, we know that the police have some semblance of his whereabouts, with video surveillance capturing him at a nearby store that morning. Cody has never officially been named a suspect or person of interest in this case. In fact, no one has. Milton, the man who let Cody borrow his car that night, has been reported as being helpful to the investigation.

20:05His car and home were searched as well. Of course, Courtney's boyfriend Brad has the most airtight alibi out of all of them since he was in jail while all of this was happening. He was released a few days later. And while police have said that he wasn't very cooperative, some have attributed that to an overall distrust of law enforcement versus a sign of guilt. So take that for what you will. But really, in all of our digging for this episode, we didn't find anything to say that Courtney wasn't happy with Brad outside of the trouble he was getting into with the police. Police have also said that everyone who had contact with her that night was interviewed multiple times.

20:45Some even took polygraph tests. But because this is an active investigation, the results of them have not been released. So it seems that Arvard and his girlfriend, who Courtney accused of robbing her before she went missing, were also looked into. But that's about all we know. Luckily, Courtney's family and her community were not going to be quiet about this. Just a few days after Courtney went missing, her family held a candlelight vigil outside of the police department, and over 200 people came to show their support. A week later, the Palmyra Fire Department organized an official search for Courtney, and so many people came out to help that they had to turn them away.

21:28Now, the searchers along with a canine unit combed through about a two-mile radius around her apartment but nothing was found Her community and family held different fundraisers like dances and car washes and they sold tie-dye shirts that read Come Home Courtney Before long, the reward for information hit$50 ,000 But even with all of these efforts nothing was found to point to what could have happened to Courtney Then, as we unfortunately see, weeks turned into months, and months turned into two years And that's when it seemed like there was something that was going to move this case forward In 2014, Courtney's mom Wendy started getting emails from a woman named Amanda She said that she and Courtney were friends and overheard a troubling conversation According to Amanda, she heard some guys talking about how they broke into her apartment to steal weed and cash Just like Courtney said Arvard did But in this story, during the break-in, they killed her, wrapped her in a blanket And weighed her body down in a local lake Amanda also told Wendy that she had visions of Courtney floating around her house I mean, obviously this is just a horrific story but it also seems to be rooted in something that Courtney said previously.

22:54However, Courtney's mom, Wendy, was rightfully skeptical. None of Courtney's friends that Wendy knew said that they knew anyone named Amanda, so she figures it's some kind of cruel hoax or something. But then, Amanda reaches out to Courtney's dad, Scott. She tells the same story about Courtney being put in a lake. So he's like, enough is enough, and he goes to investigators about Amanda. And they thoroughly investigate this claim. They search a nearby lake about 12 miles away from Courtney's apartment. But they don't find anything. In the end, Amanda changes her story a few times. And Courtney's family doesn't have much faith that she's telling the truth.

23:34But some people can't let go of the theory that maybe Courtney was right all along. That Arvard really did rob her. And it's worth noting that Arvard does have a criminal history that includes robberies. He and three other men broke into the home of a woman and her nine-year-old son. They had masks on and were holding guns. One of them held the victims at gunpoint while the others ransacked their home. They did leave without harming the woman who immediately called police. Of course, they were later arrested and pled guilty to burglary, theft, and other charges. At 25 years old, Arvard was sentenced to five to ten years in state prison.

24:12So between what Courtney said and what Amanda said, some people still wonder. But there is an issue with the break-in theory. Cody was sleeping there that night and says that he didn't hear anything. Wendy also told the Vanished podcast that she didn't believe that Courtney would have gone anywhere quietly. Plus, when Wendy got to the apartment, she said that it didn't appear ransacked and that there was cash out in different places. So, I mean, this is just speculation, but it seems that if somebody did go into her apartment that night, it likely wasn't to rob Courtney, but to harm her. Which really does bring us back to Cody, who was Arvard's friend.

24:51So one theory is that Cody may have let Arvard or someone else into the apartment to harm Courtney. And all the screaming and stomping heard by her neighbors was really just her being harmed. But of course, there are other people who might want to harm a beautiful young woman as well. And the DA David Arnold has made a statement along these lines. He said that if Courtney had connection with people who sold drugs like marijuana, that maybe someone connected to that type of criminal activity is to blame. Though we really don't know who any of those people would be. Again, this is just speculation, and according to Courtney's family and investigators, there was no sign of a struggle or foul play in the apartment.

25:35Another theory is that something happened to Courtney after Cody left. Again, his official story is that he didn't check every room of her apartment before leaving. If that's true, it's possible that she slept through him calling out for her, Cody left, and someone else came in who took or harmed her. I mean, other than that, it feels like the only other possibilities are Courtney going willingly, walking out of her apartment and leaving behind her childhood dog, her money, and her entire life behind. or walking out and being met with some type of foul play. Unfortunately, that is pretty much where Courtney's case is today.

26:16It feels like we have so much that has amounted to so little in this investigation, and it's clear how hard it's been for her family. According to reporting by Ann Reeves for PennLive, Courtney is one of five children. She's Scott and Wendy's second-born and oldest daughter. Not all the kids have been named in the media, but there are only 10 years between the oldest and the youngest, so I have to imagine that they were all pretty close. They grew up on a 10-acre farm where they would camp, hike, ride four-wheelers, or just float down the river, one of Courtney's favorite things to do. At least outside of bringing home every stray animal she could, according to her dad.