The Woman Who “Caused” Her Own Kidnapping To Write A Book — Hannah Potts

Today's case takes us to Gibson County, a rural area of the state of Indiana where in 2020 Hannah Potts lived with her family.

The Potts lived on a farm since they thought it was a safe and good place to work, live and raise their children. In fact it was, until suddenly in July 2020 things went wrong and the family's life was never the same again.

The facts:

On the night of July 23 to 24, Hannah told her mother that since she couldn't sleep, she was going for a walk and that she would take the opportunity to photograph animals. Then the girl grabbed her phone and left.

The next morning her family discovered that the girl had not returned home, however the worst came they checked her Facebook account: there they saw that she had posted a chilling video in which she said the following:

"Mom, are you there? Mommy, he can hear me... please say something. I need to hear your voice. Something happened, I was taking pictures of the animals and a black man came out of nowhere. He grabbed me and put me in a brown truck. His voice is deep. Please mom, can you tell me something? I'm in a room. You have to tell the police everything so they can find me. I love you and tell Dad that I love him too."

As is logical, upon hearing this, Hannah's parents warned the police. The agents, knowing that time was against them, began to investigate instantly and even asked the FBI for help.

In a few hours the video went viral on social networks, which led to the media all over the country covering Hannah's case.

Thanks to this, a large number of volunteers showed up to help the Potts family in the distribution of posters with the photo of the girl, which also included a description of her physique and the circumstances of her disappearance.

They also took advantage of social networks, another of the few resources they could use at that time. Lauren, Hannah's twin sister who was devastated, published the following post:

"With a broken heart, I never thought that anyone would publish something like this. I need help, Facebook friends. Please share this post, share this photo. Please help us. My twin sister Hannah posted a video describing that she had been kidnapped this morning. If you have seen or have heard from her, please contact the police department of Princeton, Indiana or my family. I miss you Hannah, please come home."

The police also appealed to the public in case anyone had important information that could take them to the girl's whereabouts, but without success.

When the FBI tracked Hannah's mobile phone, they discovered several important things, such as that in the early morning of her kidnapping a mobile phone tower that was about 3 km from her house had received a signal from her phone.

The girl posted the Facebook video at about 6 in the morning so by that time she was already detained. If her phone had been connected to that tower, that meant that it was being held near her house.

There was also something that didn't fit and it was why she decided to send a 6-minute video instead of calling 911 to report what happened. Even so, the agents decided to investigate more thoroughly and not draw hasty conclusions thinking that everyone acts differently in stressful situations.

For their part, the local police were desperately looking for a black man with a brown van, as the girl had described in her video, however they did not find anyone with those characteristics in the area.

The next step was to review the girl's life, mostly to find out if the person who had taken her had been watching her.

Thanks to this, they learned that before the disappearance Hannah had been in contact with a 34-year-old woman named María Hopper and that she lived just over a kilometer from her house.

The investigators went to Maria's house. The woman confirmed that she knew Hannah and that the last time she had seen her was days before the disappearance. With this answer it seemed that they were facing another dead end.

But everything changed with the results of the analysis of the missing young woman's phone and this indicated that the video had been uploaded very close to María's house. Because of this, the agents went to the friend's house again to talk to her.

On July 26, María was interviewed again and insisted on what she had said the first time. At that time in the woman's house was 45-year-old Joshua Thomas, her boyfriend. This man also told the agents that he didn't know anything about Hannah.

After their conversation, the police asked Maria to let them take a look at the house at what she reluctantly agreed to. At first glance they didn't see anything suspicious until there was something that caught their attention... Some stairs that went to a basement.

Hannah Potts:

When she saw the interest of the police, María said that in the basement they had nothing, only unnecessary things that they stored. As you can already imagine, the woman was lying.

Even so, the agents decided to inspect the basement and it must be said that what they found there left them quite surprised... Among dusty objects they noticed that there was a kind of plywood very different from everything else and that it had no dust. This sheet seemed to be covering another access to the basement.

When they removed it, they saw that on the other side Hannah was in perfect condition with shackles on her ankles and handcuffs hanging on the right hand. But what left them perplexed was when she admitted that she had not been kidnapped and that she was there of her own free will.

Hannah, Maria and Joshua were transferred to the police station and there the first admitted that she had planned everything and that for this she had asked her two friends for help.

The agents were able to trust this with an exchange of messages that the girls made the previous days and that one of the agents defined as follows:

"The tone, content and context of the messages read is similar to a fantasy novel."

Now the big question was why Hannah had organized all this.

The girl told the investigators that she was writing a book and that she had decided to prepare her kidnapping to be inspired and thus know what the real victims feel. For her, María and Joshua were only characters in her story that helped her with everything.

Hannah said that to make everything more realistic, they beat her in the basement, brought her food and drink and broke her phone so that the police could not track her.

The heartbreaking video that Hannah uploaded to Facebook was pre-recorded and according to her she was rehearsing for a week to make it credible. Of course, her family didn't know what she was up to.

When the truth was revealed, the Potts family apologized to everyone who had participated in the search and even Brittany, her sister, apologized on her social networks with the following message:

"Since news is coming out about Hannah's discovery, I need to make a public statement about it. I publicly repudiate her and I don't want to know anything about my sister. She is dead for me. I hope it will be prosecuted with the full weight of the law. My family feels extremely embarrassed by her actions and by the fact that she tried to blame a black man. I'm ashamed of you, Hannah.”

During her confinement Hannah wrote a diary and on one of the pages she wrote that she was convinced that her Facebook video was going to go viral.

Hannah Potts was accused of falsely reporting a kidnapping. Michael Chrochan, the Gibson County prosecutor, said this in a statement:

"For their actions, people with a description similar to the one she had given had run the risk of being unjustly imprisoned. Not to mention the amount of police resources that were used for her search that are now unrecoverable. This contempt for others will simply not be tolerated."

Maria Hopper and Joshua Thomas were accused of perjury and cover-up after admitting that they had collaborated with their friend.

The 3 were released on bail and in September 2020 Hannah pleaded guilty to false kidnapping so she was sentenced to one year of parole plus 120 hours of community service.

María and Joshua, for their part, also received a conditional release sentence.

Many believe that Hannah was not only looking for inspiration for her book but also wanted to generate expectation around her person so that it would later be a bestseller.

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