If you listen to a lot of true crime, you already know there is an invisible script most stories follow. We are used to hearing about the "perfect" victim—stories that comfortably fit into a neat, marketable headline. But the reality of who vanishes or gets hurt in this country is a lot messier, and a lot darker, than what fills our national feeds.

In criminology, the term "Less Dead" describes a class of victims who are essentially marginalized twice: first by their attacker, and second by a system and a society that looks at their lifestyle, their race, their income, or their struggles, and decides their absence isn't worth a headline.

In this episode, host Erica crumples up that template and throws it in the trash. We travel across the entire state of Indiana—from the far northern borders down through Indianapolis  ...