Susan Walsh

Susan Walsh ( Merchant; born February 18, 1960) is an American writer and freelance journalist who disappeared outside her home in Nutley, New Jersey on July 16, 1996. Her disappearance was widely publicized into the late 1990s, especially after several newspapers and media outlets published articles suggesting possible links to the Russian mafia or New York City's underground vampire community, both subjects she had investigated while writing for The Village Voice.

Walsh's case has been profiled on multiple television programs, including Unsolved Mysteries in 1997 and Disappeared in 2012. She was also the subject of the 1998 book Piercing the Darkness: Undercover with Vampires in America Today by Katherine Ramsland.

Background Walsh was born Susan Merchant on February 18, 1960 to Floyd Shelby and Martha Ellen Merchant ( Young). Her father worked as an engineer, She grew up in Totowa and Wayne, New Jersey. She aspired to be a poet from a young age. She was later employed as a writer for Screw magazine, working under publisher Al Goldstein. Goldstein later described his on-and-off working relationship with Walsh as "four years of craziness." In 2009 it was reported that the page for the entire month of July 1996 was missing from Susan Walsh's calendar in her apartment.

Walsh had penned an in-depth report published in The Village Voice about a strip club ring in which members of the Russian mafia in Brighton Beach were allegedly trafficking young girls into the sex industry. Following this article, Walsh had also explored an underground vampire community in New York City, but the newspaper did not run the story as it felt Walsh's writing on the matter was not objective. Ultimately, police were unable to establish any connections between Walsh's disappearance and her work on either article. Walsh established a friendship with journalist James Ridgeway during her time writing for the Voice, with Ridgeway referring to her as his "most reliable" writer. Walsh was recorded in a group interview for the film on July 14, 1996, two days before her disappearance, during which she made a reference to having a "stalker."

In 2022, Walsh's brother, Arthur Merchant, requested the disclosure of police records regarding her case in an Essex County court.

Works Known bibliography Screw Magazine The Village Voice (2 articles) Red Light: Inside the Sex Industry by James Ridgeway; Sylvia Plachy (primary researcher, contributor)

Filmography Stripped (2001, documentary) as herself