The Forgotten Ones: Remembering Equilla Lynn Hodrick

There are some names that echo through the media for years—cases that dominate headlines, podcasts, and documentaries. And then there are the others. The children whose stories never reached beyond a local column or a few fleeting minutes on the evening news. These are the ones I feel called to write about—the missing and murdered whose voices have been silenced twice: once by their disappearance, and again by the silence of the press.

One of those children is Equilla Lynn Hodrick.

It was August 12, 1985, in the Bronx. Eight-year-old Equilla was sitting with her mother on the porch of their Briggs Avenue home. At some point, she dashed off toward a familiar sight—a Mr. Softee ice cream truck parked nearby. Her mother, eight months pregnant, couldn’t follow, but she wasn’t alarmed. Equilla always came back quickly.

But this time, she didn’t.

Later, her cousin claimed to have seen her playing video games at an arcade on the corner. That would be the last possible sighting of Equilla. When she didn’t return home, her mother called the police, and the search began. Bloodhounds traced her scent as far as Webster Avenue, near the Metro-North train tracks—but there the trail went cold.

Equilla was just eight years old. She stood 4’11” and weighed 80 pounds. She had brown hair, hazel eyes, a gap between her front teeth, scars near her eye and cheek, and discoloration on her back. She wore glasses. These details, once precious identifiers, have now been carried forward in age-progressed photos, trying to show us what she might look like at 46. But she has never been found.

Her case was reopened years later by the NYPD cold case squad. Yet even now, nearly four decades later, Equilla’s name rarely surfaces in the public consciousness.

This is why I write. Because every child deserves to be remembered. Every child deserves to have their story told. And because behind every missing child is a family who never stops hoping, never stops grieving, never stops wondering.

Equilla Lynn Hodrick is one of the forgotten ones. But here, today, she is remembered.