The Mystery of Kiley Rodni: Police begin probe of local sex offenders, TWO WEEKS after teen vanished
TRUCKEE, CALIFORNIA: Kiely Rodni, 16, went missing on August 6, 2022, after attending a boozy party at Prosser Family Campground in the Tahoe National Forest. It has been over two weeks since the teen disappeared. Placer County Sheriff's office said because the teen's car is also missing, they are treating the investigation as a possible abduction. Her vehicle is identified as a silver 2013 Honda, which has a ram's head sticker on the windshield and the license plate number is 8YUR127. The Police are in a dilemma about how Kiely disappeared. Anyone with information will be rewarded $75,000. A former couple Janette 'JJ' Pantoja, 29, and her ex-boyfriend Juan Almanza Zavala, 36, also disappeared on August, 6, and were found in the same locality in Penn Valley. However, there is no evidence that the cases are connected.
The police have combed the sex offender registries in California and Nevada for suspects in the disappearance of 16-year-old Kiely Rodni as investigators exhaust more leads in the frustrating search for the missing teen. The FBI has pitched in as well, helping area cops chase down 1,562 dead-end leads in the search efforts for the blond-haired teen. Many partygoers who were with Kiely Rodni the night she vanished are refusing to cooperate with investigators because they’re afraid they could get charged over “illegal activity” and then kicked out of college, California authorities said. Authorities have repeatedly told community members they’ll turn a blind eye to the illicit acts in the interest of finding the teen. “While we don’t condone that illegal activity, for the purposes of this search and investigation, that is not our priority. We don’t want to take partygoers to jail for drugs or underage drinking, we want to find Kiely,” Placer County Sheriff’s Office public information officer Angela Musallam said, emphasizing cops will keep tips anonymous.
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“People aren’t talking to us,” office Musallam told The Post August, 18, adding that although some have come forward, many are staying silent. “A lot of people from the party may be in college or may be just about to start college and they’re afraid they will ruin their future if they say something,” Musallam said. “Just tell us what you know. Her family has suffered enough,” she pleaded. Police have photos of Kiely at the party, but despite an estimated 200 to 300 attendees, not a single partygoer has come forward saying they saw Kiely leave. The 16-year-old hasn’t been seen since, and authorities are in a further quandary as they can’t find the silver Honda CRV she drove to the party. Musallam said few of the paths leading out of the party site had cameras. The department has received hundreds of tips but few workable leads after almost two weeks. There were 91 detectives and investigators on the case. Cops announced over the weekend they were scaling back the search for Kiely after spending hundreds of hours scouring the region. “We ask people who know something, do you want this to weigh on your conscience?” Musallam said. “You will have to live for the rest of your life knowing a family won’t have closure about where their daughter is.”
Her cell phone last pinged around 12:30 a.m. near the campground's reservoir lake after she texted her mom she was heading home. The sheriff’s office is also investigating online reports that there were older men at the party, who might have been handing out drugs. “I can’t talk about how many older guys were at the party,” Musallam said. “But I can say the majority of partygoers were minors and young adults.” The focus is on door-knocking partygoers to collect more information about how Kiely left the party. “All scenarios are still on the table because we don’t know what happened to Kiely,” Musallam said. Volunteers from high school students to ski patrol and soccer moms are searching by foot, dirt bike or pickup truck and logging their search grid on the backcountry mapping tool CalTopo. One of them is Lisa Petrucci, 58, from nearby Sierraville, California about 25 miles north of Truckee. “We’re mountain people. We find people here, so we thought we’d find her in a reasonable amount of time or we would at least have recovered her car by now,” the mom said. It is not uncommon for skiers and hikers to go missing in the Sierra Nevada Mountains near Truckee and the locals are practiced at finding them.
While Petrucci and the rest of the volunteer searchers are outwardly positive that Kiely will turn up, they are becoming increasingly concerned about why she hasn’t been found by now. Petrucci’s kids all went to Forest Charter School, from which Kiely recently graduated, and the annual graduation party near Prosser Family Campground is a time-honored tradition. “Every year they have that party,” Petrucci said. “My daughter graduated last year and she did it. Kids from other towns nearby come to the party. “They get together and have a good time before going off to college.”
Investigators have logged a cumulative 18,810 man hours into searching. Efforts for finding Kiley will become more "focused on the investigative end" after police searched land and water and found nothing. Next week, the investigation will move into a "task-force style" investigation. Kiley Rodni is described as 5 feet, 7 inches tall and about 118 pounds with blonde hair and hazel eyes. She has a tattoo on her ribs of the number "17." She has a nose ring and several other piercings and was wearing three gold necklaces the night she went missing, according to her friends. She was wearing green Dickies pants, a black studded belt and a black spaghetti-strap bodysuit, according to authorities. She may also have been wearing a pink and white "Odd Future" hoodie.