(NewsNation) — Each week, NewsNation focuses on a missing persons case from across the country, taking viewers behind the headlines. The “Missing” series has covered more than 100 cases as 2023 comes to an end.
It’s NewsNation’s mission to bring the cases to light with the hope of finding answers and closures.
The circumstances included families stunned by a sudden disappearance, a farmer’s boots still standing in the spot where he left them, a little girl who vanished during a custody battle, young mothers ripped out of their daily routines, and kids left alone.
“We believe Maddi’s disappearance is involuntarily, suspicious and we are all concerned for her safety,” Winona, Minnesota, Police Chief Tom Williams said at an April news conference about the disappearance of a local woman, Madeline Kingsbury.
Kingsbury’s remains were found two months later. Her ex-partner, Adam Fravel, faces first-degree murder charges.
In Wyoming, the fiancé of another woman, Irene Gakwa, is behind bars. He was sentenced to as many as six years in prison for draining her bank account and deleting her emails.
Her family still has no answer to their question: What happened to Irene?
“My prayer is that by the end of this year, we know what happened to our sister,” Gakwa’s cousin, Tarisai Githu, told NewsNation in an interview earlier this year.
The two are cousins but are close enough to call each other “sister.”
Some families who spoke with NewsNation were suspicious of the information they received or felt investigators dismissed cases as not worth their time. Relatives were certain their loved ones didn’t leave on their own. Parents raising their grandchildren have been left to wonder if they’re doing the job up to their missing loved one’s standards.
And while surveillance videos at times showed last-known locations, they didn’t provide the most important clue: What happened next?
NewsNation heard the all-too-common stories of happy, loving families splintered by mental illness, lives suddenly abandoned and families frustrated by privacy laws.
One mother climbed into dumpsters and caves while following tips to find her son.
“I’m exhausted. Totally exhausted. You know what all this is from?” the woman, Marilyn Briscoe, said as she pointed to cuts and bruises in a video she posted to Facebook. “It’s from me climbing in a cave the other day. For three hours. Me!”
Her son Ira Briscoe and his roommate Limon Little disappeared in December 2020. She searched tirelessly, even if her best hope was to find her son’s remains.
“I was praying, ‘God, please just let me find it and let it be over. Let it be over,’” she said in the video.
In other cases, the parents themselves were the focus of the investigation. NewsNation traveled to the Blue Ridge Mountains to investigate a potential sighting of a missing 12-year-old.
One year later, Madalina Cojocari is still missing. The girl’s parents have been accused of failing to report her disappearance.
In a separate case, one mother whose home security camera tracked her daughter getting into a gray pickup truck pledged God’s fury on human traffickers.
“God’s gonna make you crawl on your belly,” the woman said. “Before you leave this earth, you’re going to pay for every young lady or boy that you have captured trying to traffic them for drugs or sex or what have you. And may God rest on your soul.”
Another mother recounted feeling God’s love and the warmth of her son’s touch.
“He told me, ‘Mama, I’m OK. There is a God, and I’m with him, and I’m happy,’” said Desiree Young, mother of Kyron Horman, a 7-year-old Portland, Oregon, boy who went missing in 2010.
One family was reunited thanks to a NewsNation viewer who saw a story and called police.