CLINTON TOWNSHIP, Mich. (PIX11) — When Lynn Kim left her Michigan home on New Year’s Eve 2022, her ex-husband and his sister tried to talk some sense into her.
“Don’t go to New York and meet some guy you never met,” Nicholas Anderson recalled his sister saying. “They’re going to find you dead somewhere.”
Within a week, most traces of Kim, a 39-year-old mother of three, were gone.
“All social media has been deleted,” long-time friend Shannon Christian told PIX11 News.
Another friend, Charlene Gilbert, said that Lynn “basically fell off the face of the earth.”
“She hasn’t paid any of her bills. Her phone is disconnected,” said Gilbert. “There’s no more Lynn.”
The disappearance of Kim, a pediatric medical assistant with two sons, 6 and 13, and a 17-year-old daughter, highlights the risky and mysterious world of online dating sites.
Friends and family said they knew Kim had met a guy named “Joey” on the MeetMe site.
“Her friends have told me he was from the Bronx,” Anderson said of “Joey.”
Anderson said his ex-wife moved back in with him last summer when he was fighting cancer and undergoing treatment. The two lived together with their children.
“Lynn used to cook dinner for the kids and make sure they were fed,” Anderson told PIX11. “Once she had this guy in her life, she stopped caring.”
Around early December, Kim started spending huge amounts of time on the phone and computer with “Joey,” said Anderson.
Friends now believe he has a different first name, with the last name Ramos.
Anderson said the man was abusive when talking to Kim and wanted her children to stay out of her bedroom. The online “Joey” wore a baseball hat and gold chain.
“She would walk through the house and say, ‘I love you so much,'” Anderson recalled of Kim’s conversations with “Joey.” “And I even asked her one time, ‘Lynn, how do you love someone that you’ve never met in your life? You only met this guy over a FaceTime video!'”
Gilbert said the last time she spoke to Kim was Jan. 4, several days after Kim had driven away in her 2016 Chrysler Town & Country minivan.
“This guy Joey is in the background, and he’s cursing me over the phone,” Gilbert recalled.
When she called Kim later that day, Gilbert said, the man answered.
She said he cursed her again, saying, “F— you, you’re never going to find her. We’re in California.”
Soon after, Kim’s Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat accounts were disabled.
Gilbert said Kim had texted her children, “I love you.”
“Her youngest is like attached to her hip,” Gilbert said.
About two weeks after the disappearance, Anderson said his mother reported Kim missing to police in Clinton Township, Michigan.
“They said basically, ‘There’s nothing we can do,’ because she left willingly,” Anderson said.
A detective at the Clinton Township Police Department told PIX11 on Tuesday that Kim has been entered in a database as missing, and that a red flag would show up if anyone tried to use her social security number.
The detective said he may reach out to the NYPD Missing Persons Unit.
Kim’s friends and family are most troubled that she hasn’t contacted her mother, a Korean immigrant who speaks little English and lives in Texas.
“That’s the scariest part, because her mom is her biggest supporter,” Anderson said.
Kim’s case has now caught the attention of the Missing in Michigan Facebook page, and her friends hope more posts will spur interest in Kim’s disappearance.
“I felt like she was brainwashed,” her ex-husband said.