Episode notes
It’s April 2020 and the world is locked down. In Oklahoma, a woman named Talina Zar posts a chilling message on Facebook: she’s sick with COVID and heading to a remote lake, alone — to recover, or to die. Then, she vanishes. As days turn into weeks, strangers online — true crime obsessives with time to kill and nowhere to go — begin digging into her disappearance. What they uncover is something far stranger, and far more disturbing, than they could’ve ever imagined.. In Season Three of What Happened To… , investigative journalist Melissa Jeltsen…
Transcript
Read the transcript · about 400 words, follows along as you listen
Speaker 1:Hey everyone, I'm on day nine of this virus, and I am pretty sure it has reached my lungs.
Speaker 2:It's April twenty twenty. The brand new coronavirus is upending life as we know it.
Speaker 1:I made the decision at the onset that if it got bad enough, I would not go to the hospital.
Speaker 2:And this Facebook post by a woman in a small town in Oklahoma sends shockwaves through the Internet.
Speaker 1:I didn't want to be talked out of this plan. After I post this, I am turning off my phone. I'll catch up with everyone on the other side.
Speaker 2:The woman is named Telena Tzar, and after the post, she disappears.
Speaker 1:Has anybody seen kleen or is anybody heard from Kleina?
Speaker 2:There is nothing, nothing. Some of her friends think maybe she lost the will to live.
Speaker 1:People can be consumed with grief at different times.
Speaker 2:Aren't so sure. I kept just kind of asking everybody anyone else think this is strange? Pretty quickly, the Internet brings together a ragtag group of women across the country, bored true crime obsessives looking for meaning in an upside down world.
Speaker 1:You'll notice that about me. I don't lurk. I'm out there. I'm an action kind of girl. It felt like I was living out one of my fantasy dreams of being a detective.
Speaker 2:They soon become entangled in the lives of total strangers. I lied to a lot of people a lot, and the world they uncover is beyond their wildest imagination. I was like, this is crazy. I'm Melissa Jelson join me on season three? What Happened to Telenazar? For a story that upended a community. Little town have their skeleton. I mean, they're not without exposed secrets that could no longer stay hidden. No one wanted to talk about anything, and revealed just how far some people might go to find the truth.
Speaker 2:He said, I've got my ar and if she comes outside, and I was like, you can't kill somebody. It's a story whose final chapter has yet to be written. Two trials in two different states are set to take place as this season unfolds. So you're not going to solve it online. Nobody's gonna find her on Facebook. I just had to know.
Speaker 1:How did this happen?
Speaker 2:Listen to What Happened to Telenazar on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Transcript supplied by the publisher with the episode.
What Happened to Her
by iHeartPodcasts · English · True Crime
For four seasons, investigative reporter Melissa Jeltsen has told the stories of women whose lives — and deaths — were shaped by the failures of the systems meant to protect them. Now she's widening her lens, with new episodes every week. In What Happened to Her, Melissa takes on the stories that wo
More from What Happened to Her
-
S3 · E3 · 14 May 2025 · 45 min
Belonging — Talina Zar E3
Jess discovers Talina Zar isn’t the missing Oklahoma woman’s real name, and the meaning of the moniker unlocks a door to a fantasy world ripped from the pages of 1970s pulp fiction — a fictional world where men reign and women serve and a real-life subculture where people try to live according to the principles in the books. Talina may have found her people in this fringe BDSM community, but was there something more sinister hiding among the kink? And did it have something to do with her disappearance? See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
-
S3 · E2 · 7 May 2025 · 47 min
Small Town, Big Secrets — Talina Zar E2
Jess and the sleuths connect with people who knew Talina Zar in real life. As the sleuths begin to formulate a picture of who Talina is, and what might have happened to her, they get the sense that not everyone is telling the truth. At the same time, local police begin their own parallel investigation. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
-
S3 · E1 · 7 May 2025 · 34 min
Alone Time —Talina Zar E1
Jess Trevino lived a quiet life of true crime fandom - until she stumbled upon Talina Zar’s cryptic Facebook post. Isolated because of COVID, Jess assembles an online team of amateur sleuths determined to find out where Talina went. As they get wrapped up in the lives of total strangers, the sleuths discover that the question of What Happened to Talina Zar ? has no easy answers. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
-
S2 · 28 Feb 2024 · 29 min
The Survivors — Libby Caswell BONUS
Libby Caswell is unable to share her experience of domestic violence in her own words. In this bonus episode, four anonymous women tell their stories of domestic abuse- the details they remember, the ones they wish they could forget, and how they eventually got out. If you or anyone you know is experiencing domestic abuse, call the National Domestic Abuse Hotline for help at 1-800-799-7233. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
-
S2 · 8 Feb 2024 · 22 min
Nuisance laws — Libby Caswell BONUS
The nuisance law in Independence, Missouri played a pivotal role in Libby's story. In this bonus episode, hear Melissa's extended conversation with Sandra Park, former ACLU lawyer and current head of the Civil Rights Bureau of the NY State Attorney General’s Office, as they discuss what nuisance laws are, how they're often misused and what's being done about them. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
-
S2 · 19 Jan 2024 · 26 min
Melissa in Conversation — Libby Caswell BONUS
Go behind the scenes on the making of What Happened to Libby Caswell. Host Melissa Jeltsen talks to fellow journalist and podcaster Emma Gray (MSNBC columnist, host of the Love To See It podcast, and co-author of the Rich Text Substack) about what drew Melissa to Libby's case, what she looks for when considering a new investigative project, why she focuses on stories about violence against women, and what she hopes both seasons of What Happened To tell us about how we, as a culture, view women's lives and deaths. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
-
S5 · E3 · 8 Oct 2026 · 37 minNew
Isolde Raftery
When Isolde Raftery was in her senior year of high school in the late 90s, the budding journalist and her best friend published a piece in the school newspaper that deeply fractured — even shattered — the image the school had of itself. Not only that, it led the two teenage friends to believe they were responsible for the death of a teacher, who died by suicide. Twenty-five years later, Isolde, now managing editor at KUOW, and her friend Ella, a civil rights attorney, reinvestigate their own story to get to the bottom of the guilt they carried, in a fantastic podcast called,…
-
S5 · E2 · 30 Sep 2026 · 41 min
Lisette Johnson
Lisette Johnson survived what almost no one does: her husband shot her, then killed himself. Murder-suicides happen every week in America, and they usually disappear after a local headline — with the perpetrator dead, there's no trial, no unfolding story. Except, Lisette lived, and what she told Melissa Jeltsen has shaped how she's covered these cases ever since. When a murder-suicide made national news this spring — Virginia's former Lieutenant Governor Justin Fairfax killed his wife, Dr. Cerina Fairfax, then himself — Melissa thought of Lisette. In this first episode of…
-
S5 · E1 · 23 Sep 2026 · 2 min
Coming Soon … What Happened to Her
For four seasons, investigative reporter Melissa Jeltsen has told the stories of women whose lives — and deaths — were shaped by the failures of the systems meant to protect them. Now she's widening her lens, with new episodes every week. In What Happened to Her, Melissa takes on the stories that won't let her go. Women whose deaths were too quickly ruled suicides. Women no one believed. Cases everyone else called closed. Some weeks, a mystery unfolds across multiple episodes. In others, Melissa sits down with fellow investigative journalists and podcast hosts to go behind the…
-
S4 · E6 · 17 Dec 2025 · 43 min
Beginnings and Endings — Nashville E6
As new chapters unfold, experts examine whether the law can truly recognize the harm caused when fertility care fails. Former CRH patients are left to reckon with the lives they’re living — and how far some have diverged from what they once imagined. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Take it with you
The Melo app keeps playing with the screen off, works in the car and on your watch, wakes you to your station, and browses the whole catalogue offline. Free, no ads, no account.
