Reward doubles to $50K as true-crime podcast studies Johnson County mom’s disappearance

Joseph Hernandez, Eric Adler
·4 min read

Nearly five years after Prairie Village mother Angela Green mysteriously disappeared, setting in motion what is still considered an open police investigation, national interest in the unsolved case has prompted two new developments.

Steve Ridge, a Cedar Rapids, Iowa, private investigator who last year offered a $25,000 reward for information leading to the location of Green or her remains, now tells The Star he is increasing his offer to $50,000.

“I am fully confident that more than one person knows exactly what happened to Angela,” Ridge wrote in an email. “Eventually someone will talk. My goal is to accelerate discovering the truth. This has been five years of living hell for Angela’s loving family.”

Meanwhile, the 2019 case that has been covered by People magazine, “Dateline NBC” and true crime YouTube host Kendall Rae, amassing more than 1.7 million views since 2022, is now the subject of the true crime podcast Crime Junkie, Apple’s top podcast of 2023. Its most recent episode, released Monday, lays out the details of the case.

“When Angela Green vanished from her home in a Kansas suburb in 2019, she left behind a web of her husband’s lies and a mystery that’s been haunting her loved ones and baffling police,” the episode description says.

Green was 51 in June 2019 when she vanished from her home in the 7600 block of Tomahawk Road.

Ellie Green last saw her mother on June 20, 2019.
Ellie Green last saw her mother on June 20, 2019.

In 2020, Angela’s daughter, Ellie — an honors graduate from Shawnee Mission East High School, who was then a student at the University of Kansas — spoke to The Star in detail of the strange circumstances surrounding her mom’s disappearance.

She filed a missing person report in February 2020 and has come to believe that her mother is likely dead, perhaps at the hands of her father.

In the episode, which is available to listen to on Spotify, Apple, Amazon and Pandora, hosts Ashley Flowers and Brit Prawat describe the Prairie Village police visiting the Green home at the urging of Ellie’s cousin, Michelle Guo, as Ellie’s father, Geoffrey Green, continued to avoid Guo.

“Later that day, she gets a call back from the officer who went to the house and were like, ‘Wow, you sure had it wrong; Angela’s not dead,’” the podcast host says. “(The police) say that Geoffrey said that Angela’s completely fine. She’s just out with friends, enjoying the long Presidents Day weekend. She’ll be back on Monday, no big deal.”

Angela Green, 52, of Prairie Village was reported missing by her daughter, Ellie Green eight months after Green said she last saw her mother in person.
Angela Green, 52, of Prairie Village was reported missing by her daughter, Ellie Green eight months after Green said she last saw her mother in person.

Here are some of the details Ellie Green previously told The Star:

  • On June 20, 2019, her mother went missing. Only a few days prior, Ellie had returned from a month of studying in northern Italy following her freshman year at the University of Kansas.

  • Angela, although devoted to her daughter, had also been what Ellie called “a tiger mom,” driving her daughter to achieve academic excellence. She was prone to what Ellie wondered might be depression or bipolar disorder.

  • They argued over Ellie’s independence. “One day, she lashed out at me,” Ellie said. That night, Ellie left, crying in Shawnee Mission East’s parking lot, before going to stay with her then-boyfriend’s grandmother and, later, his family.

  • Three days after the argument, she received a text from her father saying he had gotten her mother admitted to a nearby mental hospital, although he would not say where. “He would never give me the place. Anything,” Ellie said. “I asked. I asked. I asked plenty of times. Every single time, he shut me down.”

  • Three and a half weeks later, Ellie said, her father shocked her, delivering news that her mother had died of a stroke.

  • Nearly eight months passed, and there was no casket, no cremated remains that Ellie saw, no funeral or memorial. She said her father put her off each time she brought it up.

“People are like, ‘Did you not ask questions for the next eight months?’” Ellie said. “Of course I asked questions, like every single weekend, or whenever I went over there, or saw him, I would ask questions. But he would not answer anything about Mom.”

Angela Green, seen in this old family photo taken when she was about 20 years old.
Angela Green, seen in this old family photo taken when she was about 20 years old.

Prairie Village police have searched property owned by Geoffrey Green. The Federal Bureau of Investigation has also been involved. No arrests have been made. No charges have been filed. Ellie has since moved out of state.

Anyone with information is asked to call the TIPS Hotline at 816-474-TIPS (8477) or the Prairie Village Police Department at 913-642-6868.