New season of popular ‘Dateline: Missing’ podcast opens with North Carolina case

Season 2 of the popular podcast “Dateline: Missing in America” debuted Tuesday with two new episodes, one featuring a North Carolina man missing for more than 20 years.

Josh Mankiewicz reports on the case of Kent Jacobs, a 41-year-old developmentally disabled man who “went for a walk near his mother’s home near Hope Mills on March 10, 2002, and never returned.”

What to know about the disappearance of Kent Jacobs

▪ Jacobs was last seen walking about a mile from the Colonial Heights neighborhood on a road called Brooklyn Circle.

▪ When he vanished, Jacobs was 5’6” and weighed 150 lbs. with dark curly hair and brown eyes.

▪ He was wearing a black Harley-Davidson sweatshirt, blue jeans and black sneakers.

▪ Jacobs disappeared a week before his 42nd birthday, The Fayetteville Observer wrote in a 2019 story about the family’s search for answers. He would be 62 years old today.

▪ Just last month, the Cumberland County Sheriff’s Office and other agencies did an extensive search of property at 5437 Jackson Street in Hope Mills, looking for evidence related to Jacobs’ disappearance, reported ABC11, but found nothing.

▪ Police said Jacobs had been seen directly in front of the searched property on the day he disappeared, reported The Fayetteville Observer.

▪ Jacobs was legally declared dead in 2012.

▪ For the podcast, Mankiewicz talks to Jacobs’ brother and sister, Keith Jacobs and Kim Baber, and to retired detective Nan Trogdon, who previously worked on Jacobs’ case.

Anyone with information about Jacobs can call the Cumberland County Sheriff’s Office at 910-323-1500, or Senior Sgt. R. Westmoreland at 910-677-5596 or CrimeStoppers at 910-483-TIPS (8477). Crimestoppers information can also be submitted electronically.

‘Dateline: Missing in America’ podcast

This season of “Dateline: Missing in America” will focus on six cases, each presented in hopes of generating leads that will help find the missing persons. The episodes feature “Dateline” hosts Keith Morrison, Josh Mankiewicz and Andrea Canning. The first two episodes are available for download today.

The podcast series is part of “Dateline’s” digital series of the same name, which has reported on nearly 500 disappearances in the past nine years.

You can listen to the podcast at link.chtbl.com/mias2_pr or wherever you listen to podcasts.