Dateline Missing in America - Ep. 30: No Ordinary Sunday

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0:40Right. Okay, we can afford that. You know what? Forget the music budget. We're going to stick with whatever's in the public domain. Give it a try at mintmobile.com slash switch. Upfront payment of$45 for three months,$90 for six months, or$180 for a 12-month plan required. $15 per month equivalent. Taxes and fees extra. New customer offer for initial plan term only. Greater than 50 gigabytes may slow when network is busy. See terms. It begins with butterflies, the kind you feel in your stomach when something exciting is about to happen, like the moments before you say, I do. Finding the dress, choosing the flowers, picking the music.

1:20Every little detail brings you that much closer to the day when you'll promise to spend the rest of your life with the person you love. She wanted her wedding to be perfect. When I mean perfect, I mean perfect. For Marilyn McCown, known as Nikki, July 2001 was a season of love. At 28, she was just a month away from her wedding day. And she was excited about that. Very excited, very excited. Nikki had found the right man, and now she was making all the plans. The countdown had begun. Except, Nikki never made it to the altar. Because on July 22, 2001, she vanished. She was my best friend and just disappeared.

2:18It has been more than two decades. But the people who love her have made a different kind of vow. To never stop searching. because that's the thing about love. It doesn't end just because someone disappears. I'm Josh Mankiewicz, and this is Missing in America, a podcast from Dateline. This episode is No Ordinary Sunday. Please listen closely, because you or someone you know might have information that could help solve this case and finally give Nikki's family the answers they've been searching for.

3:04Richmond, Indiana is not a big place. With a population of just more than 30 ,000, it is tucked along Indiana's eastern border with Ohio in an area known as the Miami Valley. And while this might sound familiar to Dateline followers, Richmond is the kind of small town where everybody knows everybody else. And in Richmond, everybody knew the McCowns. Harvey and Barbara McCown raised a big family there, ten children in all. Nikki was the baby of the bunch. You were very close to Nikki growing up. Yes, I was. That's her sister, Michelle. We're a year and a half apart, so we did about everything possible sisters can do together.

3:54I can remember my mom and dad dressing us alike, sharing the same room. They're spending a lot of time together. Michelle says she and her kid sister spent much of that time playing with dolls, talking about school, and, when they got a little older, about boys. Tell me a little bit about Nikki and Stephen. They were pretty young when they got together. Yeah, Nikki was, I believe, 18, 19 years old when they got together. Stephen Johnston was Nikki's first serious relationship. They seemed like they was really, really in love. He seemed to really care a lot for her. And like most young love, it grew quickly.

4:44It was 1992. Nikki was just 19 years old when they welcomed a baby girl. Tell me about your mom. She had a smile to light up the room. I get told quite often that my smile is similar, but I don't quite think so. I think her smile is a little brighter. That's Peyton Johnston, Nikki's daughter. The mom that I remember was someone who was really fun and outgoing. She was firm when she needed to be. She went above and beyond for me. You describe yourself as a mama's girl? Yeah, I was mom's girl. And then I was also a dad's girl sometimes, too, depending on what parent I was with. Peyton says the relationship between her parents did not last.

5:25They split when she was three years old. Neither one of them are happy. And as much as I wanted my parents to be together, like every kid probably does, it was just one of those things where they had to end. After the breakup, Nikki focused on raising her daughter and on starting over. It was two years later, in 1997, when love found its way back to Nikki in the form of an old flame, Bobby Webster. What did you think of Bobby? You think he was the right guy for your sister? I thought he was the one because, you know, they had been separated for so long to get back together. Michelle says the two dated in high school, but when Bobby moved to California, they went their separate ways.

6:16That changed when he returned to Richmond. I thought love finally found them at the right time. Peyton says it took her a minute to warm up to Bobby. Because you were hoping that your mom and dad were going to get back together. Yeah, that was my hope. So I was a jerk in every sense of the word. My cousin and I wrote a note and put it in a sock drawer telling him, like, you know, Bobby, I don't want to be with you anymore. I'm going to go be with Steven. And this is it. And my mom found it because it was laundry day. Eventually, he won her over. Bobby was a fun guy. He seemed to have made my mom happy.

6:57It was not long before Bobby proposed, and Nikki quickly said yes. The couple set the wedding for August 18, 2001. Nikki could hardly wait, and her siblings were excited too. I was going to be in the wedding. She was really in a good place in her life. A good place indeed, and Peyton could feel it. The giddiness of the, oh, I'm going to have the wedding, my dad's going to walk me down the aisle. the bridesmaids' dresses, my dress as a flower girl, and all of that. That summer of 2001 was all about wedding preparations. And on Sunday, July 22nd, there was still plenty to do. That day, she went to church.

7:45They were picking out a song for the wedding. Nikki and Bobby planned to finish their wedding invitations that day, too. Before that, a more mundane task lay ahead. Laundry. So it's just a typical Sunday. And laundry was a regular part of that. Laundry every Sunday. After church, Nikki dropped off Peyton at her parents' house. I was a nine-year-old kid. I just wanted to get out to go play with my friends and run amok in the neighborhood with my friends. So, bye, Mom. Have fun doing laundry. Nikki headed to the Richmond Coyne laundromat, maybe two minutes away. That afternoon, Michelle was following her own Sunday routine, a trip to their sister Tammy's house for a hair appointment.

8:37Around 5 p.m., Michelle walked through Tammy's door. She said, have you seen Nikki? She said, Bobby's looking for her. I said, no, I haven't seen her. and she said, okay, well, he keeps calling here looking for her. Bobby eventually showed up at Tammy's house saying he could not find Nikki. The group then headed to the McCown family home just down the street. That's when their mother Barbara revealed something concerning. Around 2 p.m., she said, Nikki came back to the house during a break between laundry loads. Mom said that Nikki had stopped by and that she said she was pacing back and forth.

9:25She used the phone a couple of times. I asked her what was wrong. She said something to the effect where he won't leave me alone. Nikki told her mother some men at the laundromat had been bothering her. She says, you know, you're a very pretty girl, but if you're that concerned, go get your things and finish here. That did not happen. Nikki left her mother's house that afternoon and simply evaporated. And she never returned. Who were those men at the laundromat? And what, if anything, did they have to do with Nikki's disappearance? The search for answers was just getting started. it, and it would take police through a series of twists and turns with a long list of potential suspects, including Nikki's fiancée.

10:20I started an informal interview with Robert Delray Webster. What's your thoughts? You got any thoughts where she would be?

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12:09Night had fallen on Richmond, Indiana. What started as an ordinary Sunday for the McCowns was now something else entirely. Nikki had vanished. Her family, now gathered at their home, had but a few leads to go on. They searched for the SUV she had been driving. at the laundromat and the area around it. No sign of Nikki. And now fear began to creep in. Michelle says their father thought it was time to call police and turned to Nikki's fiancée, Bobby Webster, who seemed to be in a state of denial. And her fiancée said, no, it's too soon. We don't want to do that yet. So my dad said, I don't know what you're talking about, but that's my daughter, and I'm going to go get the report, and you can fill it out.

13:06So that's what he did. She says Bobby was quite visibly upset. My husband had to help Bobby to fill the report out because he was crying, emotional. For Michelle, reality and Monday morning arrived simultaneously. I wasn't worried until the next day when I went to her job. And Nikki wasn't a person that missed work. She loved her job and what she was doing. Nikki worked as an accounting clerk at the Montgomery Education and Pre-Release Center in nearby Dayton, Ohio. It's a correctional facility. And when I walked in there and they told me that she didn't make it in, I broke down in tears. The warden asked me to come up to his office.

14:00And I remember him saying they would do everything possible to help in searching for her. While the adults searched for answers, Nikki's daughter Peyton was just trying to understand what was going on. I was a nine-year-old kid, so she disappeared seven days after my birthday. When did you realize something was wrong? When I woke up at my grandma's the next day. It wasn't abnormal for me to spend the night at my grandma's, but there just was something that just felt so different that day. She says it all became real a few days later, when she was at her father Stephen's house. I woke up one morning, and my dad's girlfriend at the time was watching the news, and my grandma was on the news.

14:44And my dad coming home and explaining to me that we don't necessarily know where Mommy is. Where was Nikki McCown? As family and friends scoured the Richmond area, the police department launched a search. So we knew she was out doing laundry. That's Detective Mike Wright with the Richmond Police Department. He took over the investigation four years ago. He says his predecessors in 2001 began working to determine exactly where Nikki went after leaving her mother's house. We see it frequently. We go into the Village Pantry to get change for the machines and such in there. The Village Pantry was a convenience store, just steps from the laundromat.

15:30Police questioned employees there and looked at security video. and at 2.17 p.m., there was Nikki walking through the door. So we were able to see kind of what she was doing on video then. The grainy video is a silent movie that has been studied again and again. It shows Nikki walking into the store, wearing a pink top and dark blue athletic shorts. She walks up to the cash register and appears to briefly speak with the clerk. It looks as if she grabs some change, then she leaves. Nothing about her expression or her body language suggests any worry, any hurry, or any concern. About an hour later, Nikki returns.

16:19Her speculation is that she probably went in, went to the bathroom, and then promptly left. That video is one of the last known images of Nikki. Nikki had told her mom that a man or men had been harassing her at the laundromat. She described them as Hispanic. Nikki had stopped going to that laundromat for like three weeks because the man was giving her weird vibes in there. So she stopped going. And then when she goes back, she comes up missing. So investigators questioned witnesses there. The people that we talked to that were around the laundry mat indicated that the Hispanics that were referenced actually were not causing any problems.

17:03Detectives quickly ruled out that possibility. And they had to ask the family a difficult question. Would Nikki simply have left on her own? The answer, absolutely not. She wasn't getting cold feet. No question whatsoever. However, Nikki was not getting cold feet. She was planning on a big, beautiful wedding. Michelle wonders whether investigators focused too heavily on that theory in the early days, while valuable time was slipping away. I really don't think the police thought that she was missing. Michelle says Nikki also had Graves' disease. That is a condition requiring daily medication, which Nikki did not have with her when she disappeared.

17:56More importantly, Michelle says Nikki would never walk away from her family. She would never leave her daughter. And I know that she loved my parents and her brothers and sisters and nieces. And I know that she wouldn't just run off. So if Nikki had not left voluntarily, Then what happened? Investigators started with the people who knew her best, including the man she was about to marry, Bobby Webster. A few days after Nikki disappeared, investigators brought in her fiancé for an interview. I started an informal interview with Robert Delray Webster. This audio was obtained by a local Ohio station.

18:48What's your thoughts? You got any thoughts where she would be? Man, I know you've been sitting there thinking for the last three days. I'm just thinking about what Reverend would tell me to be strong through the time I'm missing. Have faith. This is hard. Bobby told detectives the couple planned to meet up later to finish their wedding invitations after Nicky did the laundry. He also mentioned that he and Nicky had switched vehicles that morning. Nicky took his black GMC Jimmy to the laundromat. He borrowed her black Toyota Camry to take his cousin to the mall. I had planned to take him to the mall to get sized for his tuxedo.

19:31Well, she said, I'll just take the truck. That way he could hit the car. Because my truck's a real piece of crap, you know. The Jimmy? Yeah. It doesn't run real big. Bobby said around 2.15 p.m., he passed the laundromat and saw that Jimmy parked outside. Okay. Did you see her in there? No, I was just riding by. He said he drove to his cousin's house, picked him up, and the two headed to the mall. So did you and Billy get done out there? At the mall, I'd say it was roughly, I looked at rings for about another 20 minutes. I know I'm with several surveillance tapes between me and time. Two of them?

20:07I know I'm in a lot of mall security tapes because we hit those two shops and we were in there for a good 45 minutes. Bobby said after the mall, he drove back past the laundromat. And this time, the jimmy was gone. He said he assumed Nikki had driven to her sister Tammy's house down the street, a place where she often stopped. So he went there to check. Tammy was there. Nikki was not. Did she see me? No, she hadn't seen either. So along he went with his afternoon, Bobby said, stopping by his grandmother's, talking with friends about the wedding, before finally heading home. What time did you finally get home?

20:49It was, I was a little after five. Okay. He said Nikki was still not there when he got home. No messages on their answering machine either. I was like, you know, where she at, you know? Maybe she called her running her mouth. I didn't call. I didn't call for another half an hour. I figured she's just doing a woman's thing running her mouth. He said he still did not think anything was wrong. So he just waited. I flipped through the channels and I got stuck on a movie accident a thousand times. Any given study. As time ticked on, Bobby said his concern grew. And he called Nicky's dad. I said Nicky there.

21:31Like, no. Fine. Okay. Yeah. Called her sister again. She went back there yet? She said no. So, he said, he got started on those wedding invitations without her. Then around 7 p.m., Nikki's cousin called, looking for her. She had not seen her even had started. And she assumed she would have been home. Bobby thought so too. That's when he said he'd decided to return to Nikki's sister Tammy's house. Then I just got in the car and took off down there. This is right when it started to get dark. As detectives went through Bobby's story, they also began taking a closer look at his actions that day. I don't know that I would go as far as to call him a suspect.

22:15There's pretty bizarre behaviors that just kind of didn't look right with him. Only on set of this case. Some of those odd behaviors were also things Nikki's family noticed. The day of her disappearance, that Sunday, we all were at my sister Tammy's house, you know, waiting to hear something from the police or hoping that Nikki came home. Well, this was on the 22nd. On the 23rd, about 5 a.m. in the morning, he gets up and says, I got to go wash the car. Hmm. And we're like, wash the car? He said, yeah, Nikki, you know, she told me to wash the car. We're like, you talked to Nikki? He was like, no, it's just something I always did.

23:06And it just seems strange. Like, we're panicking, and you're getting up to go wash the car. Michelle says that was not the only thing Bobby did that troubled the family. She says days after Nicky disappeared, he went to a jeweler and tried to return their wedding bands. And then he takes the wedding rings back a couple of days later? There was more. Michelle said that Nicky was attending Sinclair Community College with the hope of becoming a U.S. Marshal. Not long after she disappeared, Michelle said Bobby tried to access money that Nicky had set aside for her education. When Bobby talked with a reporter in 2018, he denied doing that.

23:55He also said the ring was on layaway and that he was only trying to get money to help fund the search for Nikki. Michelle was suspicious. If he would have said, I got to pay the bills or whatever, I could understand that in case she comes back. Because he took time off of work, everyone did. But his reasoning didn't fly. All of it left Nikki's family with questions. Investigators asked Bobby to take a polygraph, which Detective Mike Wright said he failed. A failed polygraph, however, is not proof of anything. And investigators did not find any actual evidence linking Bobby to Nikki's disappearance.

24:42So they kept looking for Nikki and for that black GMC Jimmy she had been driving. Weeks passed. Peyton was learning what life looked like without her mom. I mean, you must have thought, everybody must have thought, like, whatever this is, she'll be home. Yeah. I remember thinking, like, oh, it's okay. Like, she'll be home soon. Mommy will be home. I won't have to, you know, stay with Dad forever, and I won't have to stay with Grandma forever. And then first day of school happened. And at that point, it had been almost a month. and... That's a big event, and she would have been there for that. Yeah, first day of school, I had to have my hair done, I had to have the right outfit, you know, like those are big deals.

25:28And yeah, first day of school happened, and she wasn't there. This is one of those cases that captivated the entire Miami Valley region. WDTN reporter Kelly King has been covering Nikki's case since 2018. She grew up in the area. and remembered hearing news stories about Nikki's disappearance when she was a kid. So when I first started working at the station, it wasn't exactly new to me. Obviously, all the details were new. I had to investigate a little bit. Why do you think this case still resonates with people around you, with people in that area? I think partly because there are so many twists and turns to it.

26:15And she remembers when the first big twist arrived, four months after Nikki's disappearance. She was a 28-year-old mother about to be married. Investigators found her vehicle in Dayton. Police located the GMC Jimmy at an address Nikki would have known very well. And this new clue would send investigators deep into her past. that's the other question why would she need to go there

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28:24Four months after Nikki disappeared, her family finally had something they had been waiting for. The GMC Jimmy she had been driving the day she vanished. I was just so happy they found her car because that's what the police was drilling into our heads. We had to find her vehicle. I was relieved and hoping that there would be something in that vehicle that would find Nikki. Law enforcement found it, parked at an apartment complex called the Meadows of Catalpa in nearby Dayton, Ohio. Detective Mike Wright said it looked as if the SUV had been tampered with, probably because it had been sitting abandoned for months.

29:10The ignition had been messed with. The stereo was gone. I believe the battery was gone. However, there were no signs of a struggle, no blood or anything of that sort. There was something else in the car, though. Nicky's laundry, neatly folded in a laundry basket. And that suggested a chain of events. WDTN's Kelly King. So I think that's kind of why they just brushed off these people who were bothering her at the laundromat. The laundry basket in her car suggesting whatever happened to her happened after she left the laundromat. Not there. Correct. The location of her vehicle raised even more questions.

29:53The Meadows of Catalpa was the apartment complex where Nikki once lived, and where her ex, Stephen Johnston, Peyton's father, still lived. So why would her car be there? Peyton was at her grandparents' house the day her mother disappeared. There would have been no reason for Nikki to have been at Stephen's. Detectives delved into that relationship, questioning family and friends about why they broke up. And they learned something disturbing. Stephen had been abusive. Did she talk to you about that? Yeah, I witnessed with my own eyes. Many times. You saw him hit her? I saw him hit her. I saw him choke her.

30:41I had to call the police one time. Stephen did not hide from his past. In 2018, he spoke with a TV reporter and admitted that he had physically abused Nikki. On paper, that raised some obvious questions. However, Detective Mike Wright said Stephen was fully cooperative, passed a polygraph, and was never considered a person of interest. Michelle said the family reached the same conclusion, that despite that troubled history, they never believed Stephen was involved. I would never think that if Steve had anything to do with her disappearance, he would just left the car like that. So it seemed like somebody was trying to really set him up.

31:30That's what you think. You think this was somebody deliberately pointing the finger at Stephen. Yeah. After Nikki disappeared, Peyton moved in with her grandparents and split her time between them and her father. He wishes that he would have been better to her. And maybe if he was better to her, she wouldn't have been in any of these situations at all. Did you ever have conversations with your dad over the years about what happened to your mom or what he thought happened? Yeah. And he, I think he, from the conversations that we have had, speculates that it was Tommy.

32:07Tommy. It was a name investigators heard early on during their interview with Bobby Webster. Nikki's fiancée. Is there another male's name that you have in the back of your mind? Tommy Swint. Bobby told investigators Tommy Swint worked with Nikki at the correctional facility in Dayton. He was 34 years old, married, and according to Bobby, he started working there around the same time Nikki did. They became close friends, and they spent time together going out to eat and hanging out and stuff. Michelle says Nikki saw Tommy as a friend. However, she also believes Tommy saw Nikki as something else.

32:50He really started to find an interest in her. She was not interested in him. She was interested in Bobby. She wanted to get married. She was into Bobby. There was a disturbing encounter between Tommy and Nikki, one Michelle says she witnessed. Michelle is not exactly sure of the date, but believes it happened in 1997, a few years before Nikki went missing. Michelle had stopped by her sister's house one day during her lunch break. I approached her door, I heard some screaming through the door, and I just walked in because I heard screaming. And when I get inside, my sister is sitting on like a loveseat chair with her foot in Tommy's chest as he's leaning over on her.

33:40She says, help me. He's trying to rape me. Michelle says Tommy played it off like it was all some big joke. Then he started chasing us both around and started laughing. Michelle did not find a single thing about that to be funny. even though Nikki seemed to brush it off. You didn't think he was playing? I didn't think he was playing and I mentioned it to her and she was like, you know, she'll handle it like she thought she should just handle everything. Detectives had spoken with Tommy early on in the investigation and he denied any involvement in Nikki's disappearance. A little more than a year later, they brought him back.

34:24This time, it was a more pointed interview. Today's date is August 21st of 2002. We're presently inside the interview room here with yard officer Tom Swint. What would he have to say?

34:47It was August 2002. Nicky had been missing for more than a year. And detectives still had questions for Tommy Swint. The reason why I'm here is, last time I asked you when I came in here, whether or not you would submit to a blood test, a photograph for us, fingerprints, a polygraph test if we needed, and you had no objection to that. Is that still your comment today? Well, when it comes to that, I have to seek my legal account. Tommy asked for his attorney and did not sound pleased about being questioned. He told the detective he was upset that he was even being investigated at all. Nikki was my friend.

35:25I want to find her just as much you or her parents want to find her. Then came the key question. Where was Tommy Swint on July 22, 2001? On that day, Detective, me and my wife woke up. Went to church. We went to church until 1.45. 1.45, we came home, went to sleep. And after that, we went to dinner, as we used to do every Sunday. Okay. And, you know, I know you told me that last time, but I couldn't... No, I didn't tell you that last time because you didn't ask me. Well, you didn't go in such detail, but yeah. The detective said he also asked Tommy's wife if he had been at church that Sunday. Her response?

36:03He said she could not recall. And you know what you told me? What? I don't remember. Now I know you're not in your back. No. Honestly, I swear to God, that's what happened. That interview did not end law enforcement's questions about Tommy Swint. Detective Mike Wright said Tommy was left without a concrete alibi. Investigators looked deeper into his history and found a lot of it. There's complaints about Tommy almost everywhere you look, sexually harassing women and problems of that nature at work. Tommy stayed on Richmond detectives' radar. They collected his DNA. By 2007, detectives had officially identified Tommy Swint as a person of interest in Nikki's disappearance.

36:49By then, he had left the correctional facility and was working as a police officer in Trotwood, Ohio. When that department learned he was under investigation in connection with Nikki's disappearance, Tommy Swint resigned. By then, more than six years had passed since Nikki had vanished. Her case had gone cold, while another was beginning to heat up. They started looking at the case of Tina Ivory.

37:21WDTN reporter Kelly King knows that story well. Back in 1991, 33-year-old Tina Ivory was found murdered in Dayton. She was beaten. She was strangled. For years, Tina's case went unsolved. Her family pleaded for answers. It's been a long time, and I need that closure. Then, another twist. In 2008, advances in forensic DNA testing revealed semen recovered from Tina's jacket matched Tommy Swint. Investigators believed they had found the man responsible for Tina's murder. By that point, Tommy had moved to Alabama. As they continued building their case, officers went to question him again.

38:18Tommy denied knowing Tina. Police pointed out the DNA said otherwise. Tommy asked to end the conversation.

38:31Okay? This is what's going to be the situation, and you are going to go home. Okay, but I also think that you understand that you'll see us again. That was not the last time detectives saw Tommy Swint. They later matched Tommy's fingerprints to prints found on the duct tape used to bind Tina Ivory. Three months after that interview, Tommy Swint was indicted for Tina Ivory's murder. He would never face a jury. When officers closed in on his house Wednesday afternoon, they say they heard a gunshot and found Swint dead. On February 3, 2010, Tommy Swint died by suicide when officers arrived to arrest him.

39:20Detective Mike Wright told us Tommy is still considered a person of interest in Nikki's case. He also said that a few years ago, Richmond detectives were able to obtain Tommy's old computer, and they are still going through it for clues. All these years later. I don't know if technology's advanced or maybe we can get deleted files or any other information. So that's in the works. For Nikki's family, Tommy has stayed at the very top of their list. Crucial time was wasted, and just people assuming that she just ran away because she got cold feet. And now Tommy's gone. Can't ask him. Tommy's gone?

40:05Nikki's fiancé, Bobby Webster, is also gone. He died back in 2021 without ever getting married to Nikki or to anyone else. Detectives say Bobby is no longer a person of interest. And for Peyton, his death also meant losing one of her last living connections to her mother. She says she stayed in touch with Bobby over the years, even as she wondered whether he knew something about her mom's disappearance that he never shared. That was a tough loss for me. And we didn't talk every day. We didn't talk often. but that was one of the last people that I had a connection with my mom to, you know? Adult Peyton had to have conversations with Bobby about your mom over the years.

40:54We had conversations, but it was more so, your mom was great. I miss her so much. I'm so sorry that she's not with us. But he never talked about, here's what I think happened? Not to me. Nine-year-old Peyton would like to believe that Bobby did not have anything to do with my mom's disappearance. Adult Payton. Yeah, what does adult Payton think? I think that maybe, you know, there could have been a possibility. They were getting ready to get married. Tensions were high. Investigators followed other leads we have not explored here. Detective Mike Wright told us they also looked into a woman who spoke with Nikki on the day she disappeared and who had ties to Tommy Swint.

41:39Police have never publicly identified her as a suspect or person of interest. The truth is there is no firm answer about what happened to Nikki. Her family believes some people are, to this day, keeping important information to themselves. And some of the people who might have been able to help with answers are no longer with us. That makes solving her case harder. Detective Mike Wright says it is not closed. He told us the department is still asking the public for information and still following up on tips. I talk to Detective Wright not often. I check in with them every now and then. It's like, hey, just checking in, seeing if you heard anything.

42:23What I really like about Detective Wright is that if someone, if either of the aunts bring something that someone said to them, to me, and I text him like, hey, do you mind checking into this? It's probably a 24-hour turnaround when I hear back from him, which I appreciate. Peyton and her family are still pushing to learn the truth themselves. 25 years later. Do you think you'll eventually get the answers you're looking for? With God's grace, I think we will get an answer. It's a lot to carry, isn't it? It's a whole lot to carry because I watched it take my dad away. I watched my mom grieve. I watched her daughter grow up wondering where mommy's at.

43:10This is a person I grew up with, shared the same room, grow into women together. Our children are the same years apart as we are. She was my best friend and just disappeared. Over time, Michelle's search for her sister led her to an organization with a mission that felt personal. What's the foundation you've been working with? The Doc Ellis Foundation. The Doc Ellis Foundation is a nonprofit dedicated to finding the missing in minority communities. Michelle serves as the organization's director of missing persons. I've had therapy. I've had lots of therapy. And I'm telling you, the best therapy has been working with the Doc Ellis Foundation and helping families.

44:04Because even if you don't have answers, you can maybe help other families get some. There's nothing better than bringing someone's child home. Nikki's father, Harvey McCown, died just a few years after Nikki vanished. Her mother, Barbara Estelle McCown, died in 2020. They never got to bring their daughter home. That task has fallen to Peyton. My grandma was my mom's voice for a long time until she was unable to speak for her anymore, so I took that over. This summer, on the 25th anniversary of Nikki's disappearance, Peyton gathered family and friends in the Richmond community to honor her mother and to keep her name alive.

44:5125 years is a long time to wonder, a long time to search, a long time to hope. But through every unanswered question, you have given the strength to keep going. Lord, we ask that you watch over my mom wherever she may be. We will continue to speak her name. We will continue to love her. We will continue to fight for her because she is and always will be deeply loved. In your name we pray. Amen. You think your mom's disappearance is going to be solved someday? Yeah, I do. When? No idea. But I know in my heart to hearts, eventually I will get the answers I'm looking for. Peyton has her own daughter now, Nicolette Estelle.

45:30She's named after two of the most important women in my life. The one who raised you and the one who should have. Yeah. She's 10 now, close to the same age Peyton was when Nikki disappeared. I talk to Nicolette about grandma all the time, about what I remember, what she was like, things that me and my mom did. She tells her daughter about the grandmother she never got to meet. About the smile her mother had that mirrors her own. About the mom who disappeared seven days after her ninth birthday. the mom she still hopes she'll get to see again. Because that's the thing about love. It does not end when someone disappears.

46:12It lives on with the people who keep searching. I am her voice, and I will always be her voice until she is found and even after she's found.

46:25Here's where you can help. Nikki McCown would be 53 years old today. She is 5 '3 and weighed 115 pounds at the time of her disappearance in 2001. She was last seen wearing a pink top, biker shorts, and sandals. Anyone with information about Nikki's case is asked to call the Richmond Police Department at 765-983-7247. To see photos of Nikki, and to learn more about other people we've covered in our Missing in America series, go to datelinemissinginamerica.com. There, you'll be able to submit cases you think we should cover in the future. Thanks for listening. We'll see you Fridays on Dateline on NBC.

47:13Or you can stream anytime on Peacock, YouTube, or by subscription to the NBC News app. You can also listen to full Dateline episodes and original podcast series wherever you are listening right now. Subscribe to Dateline Premium for early access and add free listening on all our podcasts.

47:40Missing in America is a production of Dateline and NBC News. Kiani Reed is the producer of this episode. Edie Peffley is the associate producer. Brian Drew and Marshall Hausfeld are the editors. Brad Davis is senior producer. Paul Ryan is executive producer. And Liz Cole is senior executive producer. From NBC News Audio, Jessica Fenton is head of audio production.

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