Her Daughter Disappeared. That’s When the True-Crime Nightmare Began

I
n the early morning hours of Sunday, May 27, 2018, Spencer Mugford, 20, and Sofia Mckenna, 21, headed to the Long Island Sound to set off on an adventure. The friends took a small, unlocked sailboat with no mast or rudder from the University of Connecticut Avery Point’s campus marina. The plan was to head out to the New London Ledge Lighthouse, a popular if spooky destination, rumored to be haunted by the ghost of an anguished keeper who’d jumped to his death a century ago. Mckenna left her phone in her locked car, and Mugford stashed his shoes, wallet, and keys in sailboats at the marina. Then they took off. 

Shortly before 2 a.m., Mckenna used Mugford’s phone to post a Snapchat of him paddling the boat as they neared the lighthouse. “Yo, we’re out here in the fucking ocean!” Sofia says in the video, before panning the camera to distant lights ashore. “That is the land… like, we still have to get to… there!” she points to the lighthouse in the distance. “Wait, we’re almost there!” Mckenna playfully tells Mugford to hurry up and “get us there!” 

At 2 a.m. exactly, Mugford posted a Snapchat photo of Mckenna standing in front of the words “No Trespassing” etched on the narrow ledge at the bottom of the lighthouse, accompanied by a caption of three laughing emojis. Mckenna posed with her tongue out and a defiant, mischievous smile. 

But within the next five minutes, something went terribly wrong. Between 2:05 and 2:09, seven phone calls were placed from Mugford’s phone to Mckenna’s mom, Michelle Mckenna. Because Michelle wasn’t in Mugford’s contacts and he didn’t know her number, she would later deduce that her daughter made the calls. But Sofia hadn’t left a voicemail or dialed 911. 

When Spencer failed to show up to his brother’s high school graduation later that morning, his family checked both his apartment and their home in Westerly, Rhode Island. Sofia had plans with her boyfriend, Austin Parrow, to go to the outlets at Foxwoods Casino in the afternoon. Parrow began calling her when she didn’t show up and, after several hours, he called Michelle to ask if she’d heard from Sofia. She hadn’t, but she checked her call log and saw seven missed calls from an unknown number. When she dialed back and got Spencer’s voicemail, Michelle immediately knew something was wrong. She called Austin back and contacted the police while he began calling hospitals. “The next thing we knew, there was a briefing in Groton that night,” Michelle recalls. “It was all kind of a blur.” 

Both Spencer and Sofia’s families reported them missing, around 15 hours after their final missed call. The Snapchat posts helped narrow down their last known location, and the Groton Police Department notified the Coast Guard at approximately 6 p.m. By 7:40, the team had found a key piece of evidence: Mugford’s “UConn” t-shirt, which he was wearing in the Snapchat video, tied to a cleat at the lighthouse. Investigators would later deduce it had likely been used to secure the boat. 

At about 4:30 p.m. on Monday, their vessel was recovered  near Truman’s Beach, approximately 13.5 miles from the lighthouse on the North Shore of Long Island. 

On June 8, a fisherman found Spencer’s body near North Dumpling Island, approximately 4.5 miles from the lighthouse. Over five years later, Sofia remains missing.

“It’s those phone calls that haunt me. Why wouldn’t she dial 911? “Spencer’s body surfaced,” Michelle says. “Where is my Sofia? Where is my beautiful girl?” Mckenna’s mother began looking for answers. 

Online, a devoted group of web sleuths did, too. 

OVER A YEAR AFTER THE incident, it seemed clear the case was an accidental drowning. But doubt remained, and there was no official statement from police. In May 2019, a state police spokeswoman told local news outlet The Day that there was “very much an active, ongoing investigation” into Sofia’s disappearance. With Sofia’s exact fate unknown, podcasts and YouTube episodes began cropping up. The case was framed as a mystery, with content creators carefully choosing which aspects of the case to include and which to omit. The most glaring and consistent omission was Spencer’s autopsy results: his death had been ruled an accidental drowning and his body had no signs of human-induced injury. But these findings didn’t fit the narrative that a murderer was roaming free. 

People following the story searched high and low for any examples of “evidence” that Sofia and Spencer were victims of a crime rather than a drowning. Social media users posted that the boat and Spencer’s body were found in opposite directions; Sofia’s phone dialed a friend after it had been taken into police custody; there was no attempt to dial 911 from Spencer’s phone; and Sofia’s body has never surfaced. The latter in particular has prompted speculation that Sofia was either taken elsewhere to be murdered or held captive. The case has gained a cult following, and has been featured on a handful of podcasts and YouTube episodes, including videos made by content creators as far away as South America. Over 50 videos about the case posted to TikTok caused the #SofiaMckenna hashtag to go viral, garnering over 16 million total views on the platform to date. After learning about the case from TikTok, people from all over the world joined a Facebook group dedicated to finding Sofia that was originally founded in June 2018. 

The true crime industrial complex, which has grown rapidly over the past few years often blurs the lines between entertainment and reality. In addition to TV shows and podcasts, true crime content has become popular on social media, where anyone can post their theories about mysterious cases on platforms like Facebook and TikTok. People debate what happened — and name names of who they believe to be involved — in comments. By creating an insatiable appetite for new mysteries, it’s also made people skeptical of reasonable explanations behind tragedies like Spencer’s death and Sofia’s disappearance. Psychotherapist Lena Derhally, who specializes in criminology, emphasizes that true crime has become a major genre in the entertainment world — one that’s rife with opportunities for financial gain, notoriety, or both. 

“It’s marketed as entertainment. The more sensationalized, the more money is made,” she says. 

Derhally notes that the true crime space “has made everything seem like a sinister Dateline episode,” and when people are bombarded with this type of content, they begin to believe something sinister is behind every mysterious death and disappearance. 

In Sofia and Spencer’s case, many people quickly concluded that something nefarious had happened to the pair — the most prominent rumor being that Parrow was responsible. As “evidence,” podcasters and social media commenters cited the couple’s volatile history which included a recent 911 call from Sofia that resulted in Parrow being arrested on two misdemeanor charges of second degree threatening and second degree breach of peace. (Parrow declined to comment for this article, and there is no evidence that he was involved in Mckenna’s disappearance or Mugford’s death. The charges against him were dropped in May 2019.) Others stated that the seven missed calls meant Sofia couldn’t have drowned because she couldn’t have dialed the phone from the water; she surely must have been panicking over something (or someone) else. 

Derhally explains that one driving force behind conspiracy theories in cases like Sofia’s is the desire to blame someone rather than the accident — even if there are no real facts or evidence to back up the theory. “If someone has an obsessive personality type and has invested all this time, it becomes part of their identity. What happens when they don’t have that anymore?”

Social media has had an enormous impact on the perpetuation of conspiracy theories, explains Dr. Daniela Peterka-Benton, associate professor of justice studies at Montclair State University.  “Conspiracy theories have always existed, but in the past people really had to seek out those like-minded individuals,” she says says. “It was much harder, and now you don’t have to be committed. People can become part of a conspiracy theory without even knowing it.” 

Dr. Bond Benton, associate professor of communication at Montclair State University, says that the devaluation of expertise also plays a huge role. In cases like Sofia’s, people form a theory about what happened, find something online that validates it, and then proceed to share and amplify it. Rumors and speculation become “facts” no matter how many times they’re debunked by experts. 

For families, this can be devastating. Michelle in particular has faced harsh criticism for stating on social media that Parrow had no involvement in her daughter’s disappearance. She explains to Rolling Stone that she’s never suspected him because he went to police immediately to offer assistance and show them his phone.  “I see commenters calling me a bad mother, saying I deserved this,” she says. “These people don’t know me, they don’t know my Sofia. If people would just ask sincere questions rather than trash our family, I’d be willing to engage in a conversation.”

AMID THE SPECULATION of what happened that night at Ledge Light, the memories of Mckenna and Mugford have been lost. Spencer has largely been left out of the coverage, and his older sister, Aubrey Mugford, believes it’s because his cause of death doesn’t fit the narrative presented by content creators. “His body was the one that was found, so there’s no mystery there anymore,” she says. “So it’s sensationalizing rather than focusing on the people who lost their lives. Sofia’s body wasn’t found and, in my opinion, that’s why she became the focus. You can put whatever speculation you want around her disappearance, still, because there’s no definitive answer.”

About a year after the incident the Mugfords began receiving calls requesting their participation in podcasts and YouTube videos, they didn’t pick up the phone — everyone was doing their best to move on from the tragedy. Although they initially had suspicions about Parrow, the family accepted an expert’s findings after hiring a private investigator in late June of 2018. 

“[The private investigator] didn’t find any evidence that this was more than a tragic accident,” Spencer’s dad, Charlie Mugford, tells Rolling Stone. “We mourned and we counted it as just a horrible accident that took them both.” 

Charlie says he and his family avoided social media and didn’t listen to podcasts or watch YouTube videos on the case, so they weren’t as impacted by the rumors and conspiracy theories that were being spread as the family mourned and moved on. “Other than knowing it was there and we all thought it was kind of pathetic and weird, we were able to look at it in a broader context and say, ‘This is the latest new thing, all these new true crime podcasts and videos and documentaries.’ Part of human nature is fascinated by tragedy and it’s a trend that’s gotten worse with social media. We chalked it up to that,” he says. 

But without a body to bury, Michelle remained desperate for answers about Sofia’s fate. She agreed to podcast and YouTube interviews in an effort to raise awareness that her daughter was still missing. In April 2022, she began working with Louis Barry, a retired chief of police and private investigator who offered to consult on Sofia’s case pro bono through his agency, Harris Mountain Investigations, in an effort to help Michelle get some resolution. (Barry’s report and interview were exclusively provided to Rolling Stone with the permission of Michelle.) 

“I was already aware of the case because podcaster Chloe Canter had done a few episodes on the case and asked me some questions while she was working on it,” Barry says. Canter tells Rolling Stone that she had followed Sofia’s disappearance for quite some time and, due to the very limited information that was available on the case, she initially had suspicions that there was foul play involved. Canter explains that, after waiting over a year for her FOIA requests to be fulfilled, she chose to move forward with the information she did have. She established a relationship with Michelle and hoped that using her platform to cover Sofia’s disappearance would help her get answers and closure about what happened to her daughter. Michelle says that she appreciates Canter’s empathy and honesty throughout the process. 

Barry got to work reviewing all Coast Guard and police reports, then he spoke with the lead investigator in Sofia’s case, Detective Justin Clachrie of the Connecticut State Police Major Crime Squad and the chief of police at Southold Long Island’s Police Department. He also consulted with current and former Coast Guard personnel, as well as a former NYPD Investigator and Task Force member. 

Although there were cameras in the marina building at Avery Point, they were live feed and didn’t record. The lighthouse didn’t have cameras so there are no recordings that show the exact movements of Spencer and Sofia (or anyone else) in the area that morning. 

Barry assessed the likelihood of all the theories surrounding Sofia’s disappearance that had been posited online — the most prominent being that Parrow murdered both Spencer and Sofia. “There was a history of domestic violence in Sofia and [Parrow’s] relationship and whenever you have an incident with a domestic violence victim, it’s easy to say ‘aha!’” Barry says. “But in this case it just doesn’t add up.” In his report, Barry noted that in this scenario, Parrow would have gone to the lighthouse and killed Spencer and then Sofia — or he happened to arrive after Spencer had already drowned. He emphasized that Mugford’s cause of death was “accidental drowning with no signs of human induced trauma,” virtually eliminating the possibility of homicide. 

In his report, Barry also addressed the theory that Sofia was abducted by either traffickers or a lone wolf predator. In this scenario, Spencer drowned and Sofia was left alone at the lighthouse screaming for help. A boater stopped, claiming to offer help, and then kidnapped and murdered Sofia, or abducted her to be trafficked. “In order to put any stock in these ‘theories’ one would have to assume that someone with ill intent was out in a vessel at approximately 2 a.m. near Ledge Light,” Barry wrote in his report, adding there’s “not a shred of evidence” to support this theory. (Not to mention this isn’t how trafficking works at all — “The vast majority of trafficking victims on Long Island are trafficked by people they know and trust, and have confided in,” says Keith Scott, a human trafficking expert and advocate in the Long Island area. “There are rarely people being snatched off the street and being beaten into submission and sex work.”) 

Barry consulted with police and Coast Guard personnel who also confirmed “there is no record of any human trafficking on Long Island Sound” and noted that Ledge Lighthouse isn’t a location where traffickers would hunt down potential victims. 

Barry’s report also addressed the theory that a violent incident between Spencer and Sofia occurred that night, leading to their deaths. He noted that there was no history of violence or discord between the friends. Furthermore, Sofia “appears happy in the last picture taken moments before what we assume was whatever incident occurred, so something would have had to change that in a short window of time.” 

As for the “evidence” presented on social media and on podcasts, there are fairly straightforward explanations. 

The boat and Spencer’s body were located 11 days apart — not surprising, Barry notes, given the strong tides and currents in the Long Island Sound area where the pair vanished. Tides constantly change, meaning that within those 11 days, there was ample time for Spencer and the boat to be pulled in opposite directions. Barry began his career on Cape Cod where he handled numerous drownings. He explains that, given the tides, there’s absolutely nothing suspicious about where the boat and Spencer were located. “There was an incident off Provincetown where a boat went down and one victim went to the ocean side of the Cape and one came in on the bay side,” Barry says. “They went down together and showed up on two different bodies of water.” 

Regarding Sofia’s phone call to her friend, there has been speculation that “dupe technology” was used to make it appear as though she’d made the call. In reality, the phone was a crucial piece of evidence that would have been carefully reviewed by police. It’s possible that the number was either dialed accidentally as officers combed through Sofia’s call log and text messages, or the call may have been placed deliberately in an effort to ask the friend if she’d heard from Sofia. 

Although it’s impossible to know exactly why Sofia didn’t immediately attempt to dial 911, Barry’s report notes that “she may have been reluctant to call police for assistance due to the fact that they had taken the boat without permission and were in fact trespassing. Given Austin’s previous show of jealousy, it is doubtful she would have called him.”

We also don’t know exactly what was happening when the calls to Michelle were placed. Sofia may not have recognized the severity of the situation at that point and hoped that her mom could assist and she could avoid getting herself or Spencer in trouble with police. It’s also possible that, when she was unable to reach Michelle and it became clear that the situation was dire, Sofia planned to dial 911 but the phone battery had died or she fell in the water before she had the chance to place the call. 

Barry concluded that the circumstances overwhelmingly suggest that Sofia was the victim of an accidental drowning, concurring with the findings of Connecticut State Police. Because Spencer’s t-shirt was found tied to a cleat at the lighthouse, it’s reasonable to assume he used it as a makeshift mooring for the mini-sail. Per weather and tide information from NOAA, the tide would have begun to recede at 2 a.m. as Sofia posed for the Snapchat photo. “The boat undoubtedly came loose from its ‘mooring’ and drifted off,” according to Barry’s report. “Spencer was a strong swimmer, so it makes sense that he would try and retrieve it.” Both alcohol and THC were present in Spencer’s system and he was likely tired after paddling nearly a mile to the lighthouse. His swimming ability was likely weakened and he either drowned as he swam towards the unmoored boat, or realized he couldn’t reach it and attempted to return to the lighthouse. 

“In either case, Sofia, now alone, was most likely, understandably, frantic. She did the first thing that came to mind for help — call her mother,” Barry wrote in his report. Standing on the lighthouse’s narrow, wet ledge, it’s likely Sofia slipped and was unable to pull herself back up or hit her head during the fall. It’s also possible that she dropped the phone, instinctively lunged for it and lost her balance. If Spencer did in fact attempt to swim back to the lighthouse, Sofia may have tried to help him back onto the ledge and fallen into the water herself. 

“We will never know — the possible exact circumstances are endless,” Barry wrote. “However, they all lead to the same tragic ending.”

Barry also addressed the fact that Sofia’s body has never been found, which many have used as “evidence” that she met with foul play. “This is not the least bit unusual due to the location, impact of tides, currents, wind, and the time factors involved,” he wrote. He emphasized that Spencer’s body was not located during the initial Coast Guard search that spanned 2,000 nautical miles, but rather by a fisherman who immediately called it in. It’s likely that Sofia was washed out to sea and, given the water temperatures that weekend, her body would have fully decomposed in approximately two weeks. It’s difficult to locate a drowning victim even in a much smaller, calmer body of water. For example, five bodies were recovered from Lake Mead in Nevada and Arizona over the summer of 2022 due to a drought that has shrunk the reservoir to 28 percent. “So despite extensive searching in a contained body of water a small fraction of the size of Long Island Sound, under much better conditions, it took 22 years plus a record breaking extensive drought for… [one set of remains] remains to be discovered,” Barry wrote. 

When we talk in November of 2022, after Michelle received the report (and after the coverage of the case on podcasts and YouTube, which was mainly concentrated between 2019 and 2021) she tells me that Barry’s report provided her with much-needed answers and clarity — and although she’ll never “get over” the loss of her firstborn child, she accepts that Sofia was the victim of an accidental drowning. The state of Connecticut will automatically issue a death certificate in May 2025, seven years after Sofia vanished, and Michelle says she’ll use the time until then to plan a funeral. 

“When [Sofia] first went missing, a woman who runs Ledge Light’s tourism said whenever we’re ready, we can take out a boat for a burial at sea,” she says. “It’ll be here before you know it, and I’d like to do it. Then I can say that I had her funeral and have that closure. It’ll help ease the pain a little.” 

Michelle grieves for the experiences and life milestones she’ll never get to share with her daughter. “I always thought she’d make such a beautiful bride; I’ll never get to see her in a wedding gown. She was so excited about a possible modeling career,” Michelle says. “It feels like yesterday. What kind of life would she be living right now?” 

TODAY, THE FAMILIES of Mckenna and Mugford focus on paying tribute to them and honoring their memories. Aubrey describes Spencer as “forever the outdoorsman” who loved boating, fishing, and hiking. “Any time he was outside, he was a happy camper,” she says. “That’s where he was the happiest.” Charlie says his son was a “gentle giant” who excelled in athletics and “wasn’t beyond coloring outside the lines.” 

“He hated bullies, especially people who bullied smaller people and women,” Charlie says. “He was truly a kind soul, often to a fault. [Spencer] was just a really good guy who found himself at the wrong place, wrong time.” 

Because Spencer and Sofia’s case did generate a significant amount of attention, Aubrey wishes that, instead of looking for a mystery, people had focused on the cautionary aspect of the risks of reckless behavior associated with alcohol. Aubrey explains that Spencer struggled with mental illness and, in honor of her brother’s memory, she hopes to help others who are struggling. 

In Spencer’s honor, Aubrey makes donations in his name each year to organizations including The Innocence Project and The DNA Doe Project. “I like the DNA Doe Project because Spencer’s body wasn’t missing for that long, but I thought if they hadn’t been able to ID him, I know I would want to have his body and be certain it was him,” she says. Aubrey explains that she chose The Innocence Project after learning that a disproportionate number of wrongfully convicted inmates have mental illness. Aubrey hopes to someday start her own foundation dedicated to Spencer that provides access to mental health education and resources. 

“At the funeral [we] just realized how loved [Spencer] was and how he didn’t get the opportunity to recognize it while he was alive,” Aubrey says. “Everybody has a story of how he helped them in some sort of way. He was very loved and I just wish he had been able to work through a lot of his demons to be able to come out on the other side and realize that himself because I just truly don’t believe he noticed.”

And while Sofia’s identity is often reduced to her relationship with Parrow, her family wants her to be remembered as the free spirited, resilient young woman they knew and loved. 

“She was my wild child,” Michelle says. “We had so many good memories and we were best friends.” Well-liked, adventurous, strong willed, and funny, Sofia was a licensed massage therapist who had previously done modeling work and was considering applying to nursing school. She loved drawing, going to the beach, and most of all, spending time with her younger sister Gracie, who was just six years old when Sofia disappeared. 

Sofia also shared a close relationship with her aunt, Amy Mckenna Manzi. Manzi, who died earlier this year, previously described Sofia to Rolling Stone as “a free spirit” with incredible resilience who adored her family. In fact, Sofia was considering nursing school because it was the career of her paternal grandmother who she admired. 

“Sofia said it like it was; there was no sugar coating anything. She told you how she felt, good or bad; it’s who she was. You always got the truth as she saw it,” Manzi says. “You never worried about where you stood with her. But she was very kind and loving. She loved with everything she had.”