These L.A. moms solved a cold case murder. It ‘revolutionized' their lives

Los Angeles Times

28-07-2025

'The Carpool Detectives,' a true crime mystery that reads like a novel, begins in the liminal moment before the COVID-19 pandemic shut down the country and concludes on an upbeat note two and a half years later: Four L.A. moms with no law enforcement training have solved an icy cold case and moved on to their next, buoyed by newfound purpose.
But as Chuck Hogan's book and conversations with the unlikely crime solvers today make clear, there were plenty of bumps along the way — from dead ends to a potential intruder at one of their homes mid-investigation.
'We went through phases where we felt like we hit a wall,' says Marissa Pianko, a former forensic accountant. Pianko first learned about the stalled investigation into an older couple's death during a journalism class and became determined to get to the bottom of it, inviting three acquaintances to help solve the case. 'I think each one of us had a time by which we were like, 'OK, are we really continuing with this?''
'There were lots of ups and downs,' concurs Nicole Landset Blank, a political opposition research pro turned book researcher who is seated at the very same table in Pianko's backyard where the team figured out the perpetrator of a double homicide.
Samira Poulos, a puzzle-loving digital advertising project manager who stepped back from her career when she became a mom, and Jeannie Wilkinson, a former entertainment industry research exec, both nod their heads in agreement as their fellow sleuths describe the sometimes-fraught nature of their first investigation.
The quartet is still a bit apprehensive about solving a case that involved organized crime and is worried that the book might expose their families to harm. To get around their concerns, some of the details about the case have been changed in 'The Carpool Detectives' and each of the four detectives is referred to by first name, like a character in a novel. Reading along, it can be easy to forget that the underlying case is based on real, not fictional, murder.
The basic details of the cold case at the heart of 'The Carpool Detectives' are this: An older couple living a seemingly comfortable life in the L.A. suburbs mysteriously disappeared a couple decades ago. Victims of an apparent road accident, their bodies were found a few months later near their wrecked SUV in a mountainous area. After more than a year, the L.A. County Sheriff's Dept. moved the vehicle due to evidence that the couple's death was suspicious. Although the investigation was covered in the media, it soon faded away.
Until, that is, four moms — who became such close friends that they now can finish each other's sentences — started looking into the case a decade later. As 'The Carpool Detectives' recounts, the women sought out the help of sometimes-reluctant police officers and the victims' family members, bumbling at times as newbie investigators. Many dead ends and a visit to the crime scene later, the women finally figured out whodunnit.
'It was two and a half years before we really broke it, and it was completely different than we thought it was going to be in the beginning,' Pianko says.
'And how law enforcement thought it would be,' Landset Blank says.
For Wilkinson, the biggest surprise was law enforcement's reaction upon hearing that the mom squad had cracked the case. 'I feel like we really did truly earn respect,' she says, exuding pleasure at the thought.
The book chronicling their investigation grew out of another pandemic dynamic: socially distanced get-togethers with pals. 'We had a friend who, during the COVID time, we would meet in the driveway for drinks or whatever, and she said, 'This would make an amazing story,'' Poulos recalls.
This being L.A., that friend mentioned the quartet's investigation to her boss at the production company 3 Arts Entertainment, and a podcast was discussed before a book deal was put together. The challenge: finding an author who could nail the crime-solving narrative while changing some of the details for privacy and security reasons. The women met with some writers, but nobody clicked until Hogan.
Hogan was at a cocktail party before the 2023 Edgar Awards, where he was nominated for his last novel, 'Gangland,' when his literary agent told him about the project and stipulations associated with it.
'I said, 'You need someone like me, who knows crimes and can get creative,'' recalls Hogan, who co-created FX's 'The Strain' with Guillermo del Toro and wrote the book that inspired the Ben Affleck film 'The Town.' Though he had never written nonfiction before, he was looking for a challenge, and the project intrigued him. After meeting with the women in L.A., he realized the underlying story about the women that solved the case was more resonant than the crime itself.
'It's a story of four women who really found themselves at a crossroads in life — as many people do — and this search for identity that manifested itself in this cold case investigation that they then went on to incredibly solve, a case that the police hadn't been able to crack,' Hogan says in a Zoom conversation from his home in the Boston area. 'This is a one-of-a-kind story.'
To do it justice, he met with the women and their families, retracing some of their investigative steps during a one-week visit. 'We took him to the scene of the crime,' Pianko says. 'Took him to a couple of different locations where we went looking for blood splatter—'
'Our favorite seafood restaurant,' interjects Landset Blank with a less bloody location.
Next, the women 'gifted' Hogan all their information about the case. That included extensive research and saved texts, but no recordings or social media documentation. Their copious documentation proved invaluable to Hogan, who could get incredibly specific in some places and lean on creativity as needed elsewhere. 'I had literally reams of information and rough timelines via text messages that they had saved, and all sorts of things,' says the author.
Then it was a matter of shaping all that information — about the case and the individual women — into a compelling narrative. 'There were a lot more dead ends and red herrings that would bog down readers,' Hogan observes.
The newbie crime solvers — and their families — undeniably experienced some rough patches over the course of their sleuthing, but none of them were daunting enough to deter them from diving into another investigation when a detective they had been working with brought over a trunk full of possibilities. Now, with 'The Carpool Detectives' arriving Tuesday in bookstores, the crime solvers are closing in on a suspect for an even bigger case — this one involving a potential serial killer of around 20 women during the 1970s and '80s. The choice of time frame and the victims' gender were both deliberate.
'Let's take this case that's about women and try to get some closure and justice for them,' Poulos says they decided.
Victims being unidentified was another reason why the women wanted to take on the case, Wilkinson continues. Beyond that, 'it felt safe,' due to the potential age of the killer this many decades later.
Whatever happens with their second case, Pianko is glad she saw that news clip about the missing couple in her journalism class pre-COVID. Solving the case 'really revolutionized my life,' she says, admitting to being simultaneously excited and nervous about the Random House book's impending release, given some personal details included in it. 'It changed the entire trajectory of my life — it gave me meaning in a way that I hadn't had meaning in a long time.'
'These three women have become like family,' notes Landset Blank, who earlier this year leaned on the trio when her family's house burned down in the Palisades fire. 'We went through a lot more than just solving the case.'