Mikelle Biggs

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2:16Today, I'm discussing the case of Mikkel Biggs. It was a quiet evening in Mesa, Arizona on January 2, 1999, and 11-year-old Mikkel Biggs was just waiting outside of her home for the sound of the ice cream truck. But in just 90 seconds, she vanished without a trace. The bike she was riding was left behind, one of the wheels still spinning. For over two decades, Mikkel's case has haunted the community, raising more questions than answers. Today, we're going to revisit the day she disappeared, explore the leads, and examine the eerie silence that followed one of Arizona's most heartbreaking and notorious mysteries.

2:57This is the case of Mikkel Biggs. It's the evening of Saturday, January 2nd, 1999 in Mesa, Arizona, and 11-year-old Mikkel Biggs is very excited about a new gift that her sister Kimber got for Christmas. Really a dream at this age. It was a brand new bicycle, pink and purple with shiny new white tires. Now, I think a lot of siblings could have turned this into an all-out fight, but even though 9-year-old Kimber is busy playing with her Barbies, she is kind enough to let her big sister take her new bike out for a spin and go outside with her to watch. It didn't hurt that she also knew that Mikkel had some money for the ice cream truck that usually came around this time.

3:41Just to set the scene a little, Mesa isn't far from Phoenix where I grew up, so I can tell you that January is basically the prime time for people to be outside and get some exercise. The weather is beautiful, and it's really the best time to be outside riding your bike. And because the local schools are on winter break and the weather is amazing, there are a lot of other kids playing outside in her neighborhood and some parents watching. In fact, the girl's mom, Tracy Biggs, was outside on the swing on their front porch with her cousin watching them play. But eventually, they do head inside while the girls stay outside.

4:14After all, Tracy did have four kids total. Mikkel, Kimber, and then Nathan who was four, and a baby girl named Lanelle who was just nine months old. If you grew up in the 90s or earlier, you may be familiar with this rule. The rule was that Mikkel and Kimber could play outside until the streetlights came on. And it's just before 6pm in the winter, so the clock is ticking. Mikkel takes the bike out for a short ride, basically just up and down her block a bit. she doesn't really go further than just a few houses down. And as if a new bike wasn't exciting enough, they can hear the ice cream truck a few blocks away, and they are ready with their pocket change to do as much damage as they can along with the other kids in the neighborhood.

4:57Kimber says that Mikkel always loved the ice cream with the gumballs in it. But for whatever reason, the truck never turns the corner for their block. Kimber is understandably disappointed and ready to go back inside. At this point, the streetlights were about to come on. The other kids on the block had gone inside for dinner, and she was getting cold in her short-sleeved shirt. But before she heads back inside, she tells Mikkel that she should come back inside too. She explains that the streetlights are about to come on. And more importantly, if she doesn't come inside with her, their mom is just going to make her go back outside and get her.

5:32If you have siblings, you probably understand this argument. But Kimber says that Mikkel basically pulled the big sister card and refused. They fought for a bit, but ultimately Kimber decides to go back in without Mikal. In a variety of interviews, Kimber says that right before she was heading inside the house, she looked back at Mikal, who was doing circles in the street, her blonde hair shining in the Arizona sunset. It's a moment that she could have never guessed would be imprinted in her mind over 25 years later. Then, Kimber made sure that there were no cars coming, crossed the street, and went back inside her house.

6:08When Kimber gets inside, she tells her mom that she's sad that the ice cream truck never came. Tracy takes a moment to console her and tells her that the ice cream truck will come back another time. And as Kimber predicted, she also told her to march right back outside and get her sister. So Kimber does what I think most siblings would do. Before even looking for Mikkel, she just walks to the end of her driveway and screams for her to come back inside. but there's no answer. She looks down one side of the street and then the other, getting increasingly annoyed that Mikkel isn't answering her. And as she's looking, she sees her brand new pink and purple bike lying on the pavement, with one of those brand new shiny white tires still spinning.

6:52At this point, she obviously doesn't know what's going on. She says she was just upset that her sister left her brand new bike on the ground, So she picks it up and keeps yelling for Mikkel. But Kimber says it was completely silent. Still, she's not worried. She assumes that Mikkel is probably just hiding somewhere, ready to jump out and scare her. But there's no Mikkel. So she goes back inside to tell her mom that Mikkel left her bike in the street and doesn't see her anywhere. Now, again, this is the type of neighborhood where kids just kind of came and went from each other's houses and all played with each other.

7:26So Tracy tells Kimber to go check with the neighbors, the Millers. Mikkel was always over there hanging out, so she figures that she's probably just over there having a good time. Kimber does as she's told and goes to the Millers' house. She knocks on the door and expects Mikkel to come walking out. But that's not what happened. According to Kimber's interview with ABC 15 News, they were sitting down for dinner. Mikkel wasn't there, but they tell Kimber that they just saw her a few minutes earlier. Ultimately, one of their sons comes out to help look for her. They walk back to the street together, and that's when he sees it.

8:02It was the two quarters that Mikkel had for the ice cream truck, just laying in the street. Of course, Kimber's only nine. She says that she did have a weird feeling at this point, but still couldn't really comprehend what was going on. But her neighbor did. He sternly tells Kimber to go back home right now and tell her mom that they can't find Mikkel. When Tracy hears Kimber say those words, her face goes ghost white. In just 90 seconds, Mikkel was gone. This message is sponsored by Greenlight. Money is this invisible thread that ties us all together. It's something everyone has to deal with.

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10:18Download the free Rakuten app or go to Rakuten.com to start saving today. It's the most rewarding way to shop. That's R-A-K-U-T-E-N. Rakuten.com. After learning that her 11-year-old daughter, Mikkel, seemingly vanished right in front of her home, Tracy Biggs pages her husband, Mikkel's dad, Darren. About five minutes later, she calls 911 to report Mikkel missing. She also called a friend and then members of her church to help in the search. By the time the Mesa Police Department arrived on the scene, there were already upwards of 60 people helping search for Mikkel. Within 30 minutes, they had a helicopter in the air looking for her using thermal imaging and announcing via loudspeaker that they were looking for a missing child.

11:06Within an hour, they had flyers with Mikkel's school photo on it, and hundreds of people were dividing into search parties. Officers also patrolled the neighborhood and went door-to-door speaking with neighbors and conducting searches. They meticulously combed alleys, drainage ditches, and any other potential hiding spots. For an absolutely terrible situation, the response to reporting Mikkel missing was really ideal. It was absolutely all hands on deck. It was and still is one of the most extensive missing person investigations in Arizona history. But it was clear that Mikkel was in trouble. Kimber says she can't remember if her mom used the word or if it was a member of the Mesa Police Department, but she says it was the first time she heard the word kidnapped.

11:55And because Kimber was the last known person to see Mikkel, she spent a lot of time with officers that night, recounting as many details as she could about the time leading up to her disappearance. This is around the same time that Darren Biggs came home, and he jumps right into action looking for Mikkel. He's talking to everyone he can, handing out flyers, and even searching dumpsters with his friends from the neighborhood. But despite all of these amazing efforts, no trace of Mikkel was found, and no one had seen her. No one heard a scream or a cry for help. They even brought in dogs, but they couldn't track her scent past where her bike was placed on the ground.

12:33Like Kimber has said in many interviews, there's a reason people say Mikkel vanished into thin air. Soon, her parents went on the local news to plead for her safe return. Now, despite the lack of concrete clues in Mikkel's case, investigators quickly narrowed in on their first person of interest. And really, it shocked everyone. They were looking at Mikkel's dad, Darren. Now, out of respect for this family, I'm not going to leave you with a cliffhanger here and go to commercial break or sensationalize this. Darren didn't do this, but let me explain why they were considering him at this point. While it is a fact that most missing children are missing at the hands of someone they know, his loved ones just couldn't believe that he would have done something like this.

13:21And ultimately, after a year of investigating Darren, investigators came to the same conclusion. It seems that when they first spoke with him about where he was when Mikkel went missing, he lied to investigators. He said he was at work when he was actually seeing a friend. See, about a month into Mikkel's disappearance, the media announced that Darren was having an affair. Of course, this sparked a wildfire in the community. Like we often see in these cases, his every movement and emotion were analyzed. He was accused of being too stoic, not showing the right or enough emotion about his daughter being missing.

13:58While Darren was 100 % cooperative with police, he also failed a voluntary lie detector test, which investigators attributed to his emotional state, not to his propensity to commit this crime. But again, this didn't stop the rumors from swirling, and the news articles from being published. Like I said, they actually watched and conducted surveillance on Darren for about a year before finally concluding that he couldn't have done this. They retraced his steps that night, and they determined that the timeline was just too tight for him to be able to grab Mikkel, do something to her, and then hide her before he came home to join the search parties.

14:36Also, after speaking to everyone they could about their family dynamics, they saw that he and Mikkel had a good relationship. There was no history of abuse or any red flags that would indicate he'd do something like this. They also took the crime scene into consideration. They felt that because the bike Mikkel was riding had been dropped along with her quarters for the ice cream truck, that she was most likely trying to escape whoever abducted her, and they felt like that reaction didn't match the relationship she had with her father. Basically, there would be no reason for her to run from him.

15:10In the end, Darren was completely cleared in his daughter's case, and detectives have since stated that it was obvious, in hindsight that he had nothing to do with this. It seems that Mikkel's case is one of a very rare stranger abduction. But going back to the search, just a few weeks into her disappearance, Mikkel's flyer was absolutely everywhere. It was on car dashboards, store windows, and billboards across the state. She was even honored during a local march to celebrate the life of Martin Luther King Jr. at the end of January. Despite McHale's church actively fighting against a city holiday to honor Dr.

15:49King, this group rallied together with her family to show their love and care for McHale, and to unite the community to raise awareness for her. In reporting by Michael Meester for the Arizona Republic, he wrote, quote, Although they're aware of Mesa's history, organizers of the King Day March weren't dwelling on the past. They dwelled simply on the plight of a child who can't be found. and in doing so, they honored Martin Luther King in ways more profound than marching or speechmaking. They emulated him. They put in action the words of the great civil rights leader, love will win, end quote. A website was also created for Macau, which was pretty progressive for 1999.

16:33Of course, the police were watching it closely. And it wasn't long before a message came in for Darren. It was essentially a ransom note. This person said that they had Mikkel and provided a date and location in which they would return her. It seemed like this was exactly the break they were looking for. Quickly, investigators tracked the messages to a home in Phoenix, about 30 minutes from Mesa. They sent out aerial surveillance and eventually deployed a SWAT team on the house. But what they found was a very apologetic 12-year-old boy instead of the person who took Mikkel Biggs. It was all a cruel hoax.

17:12By March, the reward for information leading to her was up to$72 ,570. It's a very specific number, because contributions were coming in from what seemed like everywhere. A group of senior citizens at the Val Vista Village Mobile Home Park raised over$33 ,000 for her. Darren's employer, TRW Vehicle Safety Systems, donated $10 ,000. The local silent witness program donated another$1 ,000. The Casey Memorial Foundation pledged$20 ,000. And the Biggs family had$8 ,000 of their own money to contribute. According to reporting by Christina Leonard for the Arizona Republic, by the end of 1999, investigators had sifted through over 7 ,000 leads, interviewed 500 psychics, found every ice cream vendor they could track down and cleared them, and dug through 35 mine shafts in the nearby Santan Mountains.

18:11They used hypnosis, polygraph tests, voice stress analyzers, and FBI profilers. They looked into sex offenders who frequented the area and a nearby park. The two lead detectives from the Mesa PD, Butch Gates and Jerry Gissel, even canceled their vacations to continue working on Mikkel's case, and they pursued leads as far away as Pennsylvania and Mexico. At this point, there were a ton of theories. They considered drug smugglers, that she may have been hit by an ice cream truck, and of course, unfortunately, that a predator may have just saw this as a crime of opportunity. Despite all these efforts, investigators say that they were no closer to finding Mikkel than the day she went missing.

18:57It really is amazing though. At this point, nearly a year later, they still hadn't even really scaled back the search for her, though they admitted that they might eventually have to. Jerry Gissel also said that they consider themselves to be failures until her case was solved. In that same article, Darren Biggs said, quote, of course I expected the world, and that's almost what I've gotten. It seems like they'll go to the ends of the earth if they get a lead, end quote. But Christmas came and went without Mikkel. Tracy says what she missed most were the little things, reading Christmas stories every night throughout the month of December, playing 21 questions at the dinner table, and Mikkel randomly giving her hugs while she did the dishes.

19:46But then, there was new hope Near the end of 1999 The Mesa Police Department shifted their focus from McHale's family Specifically Darren To a new potential person of interest A registered sex offender Who lived just two blocks from the Biggs family

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20:36After ruling out Mikhail's father, Darren Biggs, the Mesa PD begins looking at a man that they'd interviewed immediately after she went missing, 42-year-old Dee Blaylock. Like I told you earlier, this department literally went door to door talking to everyone, and Dee Blaylock was no exception. When they originally spoke with him, he gave them an alibi. He was in his garage watching football and tinkering with a lawnmower. This was backed up by his then-wife and sister-in-law. Police even searched his home and found nothing. But this next part is something that continues to stick in the minds of Mikkel's family, because there's a bit more to this story.

21:16They actually saw a trailer in his backyard that they wanted to search, but Blaylock declined their request. And when they came back with a warrant to search it, the trailer was gone. At that time, there still wasn't much to connect him to Mikkel. He was just a registered sex offender who was on their radar, but his rap sheet was pretty concerning. He had three former convictions in three different states for sexual assault, kidnapping, and child molestation. He served time for his offenses but was released from prison in August 1995. When Mikkel went missing, he was classified at the most serious level of sex offender.

21:56But after they first spoke with him, they kind of just moved on, possibly to focus on Mikhail's father. Now Blaylock wasn't shy about Mikhail's case and didn't seem to be hiding by any stretch of the definition. He even spoke with local news in relation to the case, saying, quote, if you're my neighbor and I see you're living next to me and I see something suspicious going on, I guarantee you I'll be calling 911, end quote. Some of his neighbors even described him as friendly and personable, but not all of them. About nine months after McHale went missing in October 1999, Blaylock physically and sexually assaulted his neighbor, Susan Quinette.

22:40In an interview with ABC News, she said Blaylock tried to snap her neck three times and he did end up breaking it in one place. Essentially, he choked her until she fainted, left her for dead, and then tried to burn the evidence by setting her house on fire. He was later convicted for these crimes and sentenced to 187 and a half years in prison. Unfortunately, this wasn't her first encounter with him though, and it really feels that this could have been prevented. She said he was often drunk and approached her on more than one occasion, even putting his hands on her. She reported this to the police saying that she was scared, creeped out, and that he appeared to be stalking her.

23:26Susan even told his wife what was happening, but it seems that no one really listened until he finally assaulted her in 1999. And here's where the connection to Mikkel comes in. In the ambulance, Susan told paramedics that Dee Blaylock took Mikkel Biggs and that they had to get him. Now, Susan didn't have definitive proof that he did this She just said that she basically had a revelation after the attack And considering his past criminal history And moving the trailer after refusing to allow police to search it They took her accusation very seriously And began to revisit the possibility that he may be responsible And slowly, but surely, more pieces began to come together Not long after Blaylock was sentenced for his crimes against Susan, his now ex-wife and ex-sister-in-law went to police with a shocking statement.

24:20They lied about his whereabouts on the night Mikkel went missing. They confessed that he was actually gone between 5.30pm and 7.30pm, exactly when she went missing. Since then, the police have put together a theory. They believe that after he drank some beer in his garage, he left his house, saw that Mikkel was alone, kidnapped her, attempted to, or successfully sexually assaulted her, and then killed her. According to investigators, since his incarceration, Blaylock has allegedly even made incriminating statements implicating himself in the case to other inmates. He's also claimed to have a split personality, stating that he can't be held responsible for what his other personalities do.

25:07It seems so clear to investigators and to Mikkel's family that this was the man responsible for abducting and killing her. But along with these incriminating statements, Blaylock has also denied his involvement, and ultimately, the Mesa Police Department said that without physical evidence tying him to Mikkel's disappearance or murder, they will not move forward with charges. But he does remain the primary person of interest in Mikkel's case. even now as I record this in 2025. It's honestly so hard to hear, but unfortunately, not uncommon. Of course, I feel specifically emotionally tied to this particular situation because of my sister's case, but I'm not alone in this limbo that families go through when a perpetrator is skilled enough to hide a body from law enforcement.

25:56I've spoken about this case before, but I just wanted to highlight that something similar happened in the case of 13-year-old Brandy Myers. She went missing from Phoenix in 1992. Brandy and my sister shared a detective. He actually introduced me to Brandy's sister, Kristen, and Mikkel's sister, Kimber, at a missing in Arizona event many years ago. Unfortunately, all three cases share similar circumstances. Our sister's bodies have yet to be recovered, but there's a pile of circumstantial evidence pointing to a likely perpetrator. In Brandy's case, her detective met with her sister and aunt, and said they knew what happened to Brandy.