Vanished Voices | Episode companion post
On the afternoon of April 17, 2019, a young woman stood crying on an upper level of an apartment parking garage in Old East Dallas. She asked a passing resident if she knew whose car was next to them. The resident didn’t. She held the door open, but the woman stayed behind in the garage.
That woman was Prisma Denisse Peralta Reyes, a 26-year-old single mother from Mesquite, Texas. She has not been seen since.
Who Is Prisma Reyes?
Prisma was born in Veracruz, Mexico, and spent her early years with her grandmother while her mother, Lilia, worked in the United States. When Lilia married Dan Fuchs, Prisma came to Texas. She was about five, and she knew Dan as her father from then on.
According to Dan, she started school speaking about a dozen words of English. Within a year she was fluent and had been invited to a magnet school for gifted students. She finished high school a year early. She became a mother as a teenager and put herself through school while pregnant, eventually working as a licensed paralegal for attorneys around Dallas. She also served in the National Guard.
The people who knew her all say the same thing: everything she did was for her son, Dominick.
Her Last Day
That Wednesday began like any other. Prisma dropped six-year-old Dominick off with his babysitter and went to work at a used car dealership, where she had started only a few weeks earlier. That morning she argued with a coworker over a parking space, which police later described as frustration with the new job boiling over.
Around midday, she left for lunch and met an on-again, off-again ex-boyfriend at E Bar Tex Mex on North Haskell Avenue. According to the ex, the two argued. He left. Prisma stayed at the bar for roughly three hours until staff stopped serving her and asked her to leave.
At 5:05 p.m., three women called 911 to report that a woman driving a white Jeep had pointed a handgun at their car. It was Prisma. She had bought the gun about a month earlier after telling people she felt she was being followed. Police say the incident was not connected to her disappearance.
Her phone records show her heading east toward home, then turning back toward Dallas around 5:30.
The Garage
A little before 6 p.m., Prisma parked her Jeep across a narrow cut-through street outside the Olympus at Ross apartments, where her ex lived. He wasn’t home. Surveillance video shows her slipping on foot into the gated garage behind another car and pacing near the elevators while making a series of short phone calls. The people she reached told police she sounded upset and confused.
She rode the elevator up with a resident, crying, and was later seen on an upper level of the garage. Based on her phone records, police believe she was in the building for at least fifteen minutes. Around 6 p.m., her phone activity stopped.
At 7:30, she didn’t arrive to pick up her son. At 9:30, the babysitter called police. Her Jeep was found the next morning, still blocking the street, with her handgun on the front seat.
The Search
Mesquite police, with help from Dallas police and the Texas Rangers, searched the complex from top to bottom. They checked every level of the garage, elevator shafts, the attic, and the roof, and they knocked on every door. Live-scent and cadaver dogs both searched the building. The lead detective, Dustan Barrett, has said he is convinced Prisma is not inside it.
The problem was the exits. Several of them had no camera coverage in 2019. A canvass of surrounding businesses and homes turned up nothing.
Police cleared everyone Prisma spoke with that day, including the ex-boyfriend. Video shows him leaving before she arrived, and witnesses placed him miles away. Prisma has not used her phone, bank account, or cards since.
What Might Have Happened
Investigators have never named a suspect. The possibilities they and her family have raised include:
- An encounter with the wrong person. Distressed and disoriented, she may have asked a stranger for help or left through an unmonitored exit with someone.
- Human trafficking. Detective Barrett has called it a concern, though no specific evidence points to it.
- A stalker. In the weeks before, Prisma bought a gun and told people she felt she was being followed. According to Kaylee Palmer, a former private investigator who has researched the case extensively, all four of her tires were slashed around that time.
- Being drugged. Her family believes her behavior looked like more than alcohol. Police say bar footage shows no one tampering with her drinks.
- Leaving voluntarily. Her family firmly rejects this. She left behind her son, her car, her gun, and every financial trail.
Seven Years Later
By 2023, Mesquite police reported no active leads. Dominick is now a teenager and is being raised by his grandmother. Dan is still handing out flyers and still asking questions, and he says he’s doing it for her son.
Prisma is described as Hispanic, 5’2″, with brown hair and brown eyes. She has pierced ears and a tattoo on the back of her shoulder, and she may wear glasses. She was last seen wearing a red polo shirt, blue jeans, and black sneakers, carrying a large black purse.
If you have any information, please contact the Mesquite Police Department at 972-285-6336 and reference case #19038244. Anonymous tips can be submitted to North Texas Crime Stoppers at 1-877-373-TIPS (8477).
Listen to the Full Episode
Hear the complete story in “Like Smoke in the Wind: The Disappearance of Prisma Reyes,” available now on Apple Podcast, Spotify, Amazon Music, YouTube and all streaming platforms.
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Refuse to let these voices vanish.
Vanished Voices is a true crime podcast dedicated to the cases that don’t get the attention they deserve — unsolved cases of people of color, LGBTQ+ victims, MMIW cases, and stories that still need tips to be solved. New episodes drop every Thursday. Subscribe and follow us anywhere you listen to podcasts.
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Resources:
Associated Press. (2019, April 23). Police still searching for woman who failed to pick up son. El Paso Times, A2. https://www.newspapers.com/image/979727513/
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