RICHMOND, Ind. — She was about to get married and had just celebrated her daughter’s birthday.
But, 25 years ago this July, Niqui McCown disappeared.
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News Center 7 Anchor Gabrielle Enright talked with McCown’s family and police about this.
Payton Lackings was only 9 when her mother disappeared.
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That was almost 25 years ago.
“It’s just been rough. Some days are better than others,” Lackings said.
At almost 34, she often thinks about the things she missed with her mom.
“Shopping trips, nail salons, telling her about her granddaughter, you long for those moments when you don’t have them anymore,” Lackings said. “I would see girls interact with their moms and things, and you kind of feel a little jealous.”
Images show the last time anyone saw McCown.
Surveillance cameras from The Village Pantry, in Richmond, captured them at 3:19 p.m. on July 22, 2001.
She was getting change.
She told her fiancé, Bobby Webster, and family she was going to the laundromat next door.
But she never came home.
The biggest break detectives had in this case came four months after McCown disappeared.
They found her SUV at an apartment complex in Dayton.
Pictures of that SUV are now in boxes of evidence Richmond police have collected for more than two decades.
Detectives Neal Vanmiddlesworth and Michael Wright are working the case.
“It’s been the most significant case for our department in my entire tenure here,” Vanmiddlesworth said.
Prosecutors have never filed any criminal charges, and police have made no arrests.
“There have been a few people that were called persons of interest throughout the case. A couple of them have been cleared, and a couple passed away,” Wright said.
Recently, the detectives said they had spoken with the Indiana State Police’s cold case investigator.
They have teamed up to reexamine the evidence.
“We’re going to comb through all the evidence that’s there to see if anything could be resubmitted, whether it’s DNA, fingerprints, some of the stuff that we’ve got out of the car,” Wright said. “We’re going to go through that, see if technology has enhanced to the point where maybe something that didn’t work out 20 years ago, maybe does provide some info.”
Tammie Hughes often thinks of her sister.
“I truly believe if it’s in God’s hands. He will find a way,” Hughes said.
She keeps posters on her porch, as a reminder that her family will never stop searching for McCown.
“I would really love to have my sister be able to, if she’s parished, to be able to have a decent funeral. We deserve that,” Hughes said. “I don’t know if it’ll ever be closure if we don’t find her.”
McCown’s sister, Michelle McCown-Luster, has channeled her heartbreak into helping others.
“When I talk to them, I can relate, so they open up,” McCown-Luster said.
She now works with the Dock Ellis Foundation, an organization that helps people find their missing family members.
“When I work on cases, and I bring a family member home, I’m like ‘I want that,’” McCown-Luster said. “I get kind of a little heartbreak because we’ve been searching for that for 25 years.”
And Payton said that search will not stop until they find her mother.
“I believe somebody out there knows something,” Lackings said. “Come hell or high water. I will be the one to get those answers for my mom. I’m not going to give up until we find our answers.”
McCown’s family is hosting a Summer of Hope.
The block party in Richmond will honor her on July 25.
It goes from 4-8 p.m. on blocks F and G on South 10th Street.
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