On the night of December 15, 2016, Detective Lauren Washington walked into Orlando’s Club Paradiso with three friends to celebrate her 32nd birthday. She never walked back out.

For three agonizing months, her family begged for answers. Lauren’s car was found abandoned in the club’s parking lot with the keys still in the ignition. Her purse sat untouched on the passenger seat. The only items missing were her service weapon and badge.

The case went cold—until March 2017, when a bouncer named Marcus Rodriguez made a discovery that would reignite the investigation. While helping a maintenance crew replace upholstery in a second-floor VIP booth, he noticed something wedged deep between the cushions. It was Lauren Washington’s badge, gleaming under fluorescent lights.

“I knew right away it wasn’t just lost property,” Marcus later told detectives. “This wasn’t a wallet or jewelry. This was evidence.”

Next to the badge was a torn scrap of dark blue fabric that appeared to come from a police uniform. Dried blood marked the fibers.

Detective Ray Castellanos, who had handled Lauren’s original missing-person case, rushed to the scene. The items were collected, photographed, and processed. Within hours, forensic tests confirmed the blood matched Lauren’s type. For the first time since December, investigators had a solid lead.

But how did a decorated officer’s badge and a piece of her uniform end up in a VIP booth that night?

The booth had been reserved by prominent businessman and restaurateur Vincent Torino. His guest list was stacked with political power—city council members, attorneys, and business executives. All insisted their evening was a routine dinner to discuss a downtown development project.

Torino denied ever meeting Lauren. Yet, one councilman later admitted seeing a “confused young woman” near the booth around 11 p.m.—a woman Torino personally escorted away. Another guest described her as “disoriented.”

The contradictions piled up.

Security footage added more questions than answers. Lauren’s friends said she left around 11:45 p.m., but the cameras captured her departure at 11:47. The Uber ride she had requested was abruptly canceled minutes earlier.

More troubling, blind spots in the club’s surveillance system meant there was no coverage of the stairway leading to the VIP area. For a crucial window of time, Lauren’s movements were unaccounted for.

Lauren’s friends recalled she had seemed different after a bathroom break earlier that evening—quieter, subdued. Forensics would later reveal traces of Rohypnol on her badge, a sedative often linked to drug-facilitated assaults. The evidence suggested she had been drugged before vanishing.

Her sister, Andrea Washington Chun, had pushed authorities for months to take the case seriously. When informed of the discovery, she was furious: “Why wasn’t that booth searched properly the first time? She was my sister. We deserved better.”

Detectives revisited witness statements. Officer Janet Rodriguez, one of Lauren’s companions that night, described an older man in a tailored suit who bought Lauren drinks and claimed to have powerful connections. When shown a photo of Vincent Torino, she hesitated—“That could be him.”

Piece by piece, the puzzle grew darker. Torino had political ties and deep pockets. Rumors swirled of past harassment allegations at his restaurants, cases that mysteriously vanished after victims withdrew complaints under pressure.

Now, with Lauren’s badge and uniform fragment surfacing in his private booth, suspicion only deepened.

When pressed directly, Torino maintained his innocence. “I run legitimate businesses,” he told Detective Castellanos. “If evidence was found in my booth, someone else put it there.”

But who could have planted it, if not someone with direct access to that space?

As investigators interviewed more of Torino’s party guests, a pattern emerged. Several remembered a brief disruption that evening—a woman lingering near the booth, escorted away by Torino. Their accounts contradicted his outright denials.

Meanwhile, forensic analysis confirmed not only the blood on the fabric but also microtears consistent with a struggle. Combined with the presence of Rohypnol, the findings transformed the case from a missing-person file into a suspected homicide.

By March’s end, Orlando police had reopened the investigation, shifting focus squarely onto the events of December 15. Castellanos and his partner, Detective Sarah Chun, pursued new leads, digging into Torino’s financial records and scrutinizing the high-profile figures present that night.

For Lauren’s family, the reopening of the case brought both anguish and relief. Her mother clutched a framed photo during a press conference, her voice breaking: “She wore that badge with pride. To know it was hidden in a booth, like garbage, while we searched for her—it’s unbearable.”

The city of Orlando, too, watched closely. The disappearance of a police detective, possibly linked to powerful local elites, was more than a tragedy. It was a test of trust in the justice system.

As of today, Lauren Washington remains missing. But her badge, her uniform fragment, and the truth concealed in VIP booth 7 refuse to be forgotten.

The unanswered question lingers: Who knows what really happened in that booth, and how long can the silence last before the truth is finally exposed?