‘We’ve hit a wall’: After five years, Fort Lauderdale teen Sophie Reeder is still missing
Sophie Reeder’s pink bedroom has been the same since May 19, 2017. She left her room that night about 10 p.m. and wandered from her house alone around Fort Lauderdale streets.
Her father, Patrick Reeder, wanted to leave her bedroom as it was the night she disappeared, still waiting for her to come home.
“That’s her home life where she feels warm and secure, so I always want to keep it that way so when she comes home, she’ll have a place to return to,” her father said in a video recently released by Fort Lauderdale Police around the five-year anniversary of her disappearance.
The 15-year-old girl left her home in the 1300 block of Citrus Isle where she lived with her father. It was not unusual for Sophie to leave, but when she hadn’t returned two days later, Patrick Reeder notified police.
Police are offering up to $25,000 for legitimate tips that lead to finding Sophie.
“We’ve hit a wall where we’ve done everything that we can imagine to do on this case, but we still have no leads. We have nothing that can move us forward, unfortunately,” said Det. Jennifer Saint-Jean, who was a missing persons detective on the case five years ago.
Sophie was seen on surveillance video that night shortly before 11:30 p.m., walking around in a brown fur coat with a pair of Beats by Dre headphones over her head.
Using her cellphone records, detectives pieced together the path Sophie walked after leaving her home, Det. Sgt. Steve Novak said in the video. They then found surveillance footage from multiple businesses of the 5-foot-1, 100-pound girl walking along the streets.
Saint-Jean said surveillance video showed that she walked from her home down Citrus Isle, “meandered in the area for awhile,” headed south on Andrews Avenue and then back north. She stayed in that area for a couple of hours before walking toward Stranahan High School.
Police said Sophie was also seen on video walking on Davie Boulevard early on the morning of Saturday, May 20, 2017.
Phone records last placed her in the area of Southwest 11th Court and Southwest 18th Avenue, according to detectives.
Homicide Det. Jason Wood said investigators found no signs Sophie was murdered, but “there was a lot of suspicious things” that “didn’t sit well” with him.
“Everything with Sophie appeared to have stopped on May 20 about 9 a.m. There was no signs of social media, there’s no signs of cell phone, there’s no calls to her friends,” Wood said. “She just vanished then.”
A missing persons detective, homicide detective and human trafficking detective have all worked on the case. And they’re still working, Wood said in the video.
They have considered every possibility: that she ran away, that she was taken or that she was killed.
Sophie left a candle burning in her room and $300 cash. Those were signs to Wood that she wasn’t planning on running away, he said in the video.
Also in her room with the cash, detectives found a toy gun and “things that weren’t normal for a teenage girl to have in her room,” Saint-Jean said.
“So that led us to having questions about what was she really into,” Saint-Jean said.
Novak said detectives have gone to several states over the five-year investigation to check on leads and have worked with other agencies to search adult websites for photos that match Sophie.
Detectives have interviewed persons of interest, searched multiple properties and used cadaver dogs, the Marine Unit and Dive Teams to find any signs of her. Wood said none of the things Sophie had with her that night have been found.
Flyers passed around Fort Lauderdale turned up nothing fruitful. Sophie would be 20 years old now.
Fort Lauderdale Police are urging anyone who may have information related to her disappearance to call 954-828-6677 or email SophieTips@fortlauderdale.gov.
