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Mar 26, 2008 9:52 pm US/Pacific
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Colusa Cold Case May Be Solved After 30 Years
PENSACOLA (CBS13) ―
A mother of five has been missing for decades, and her family's search has taken them across the country. Now, it could be ending right here in northern California.
Nellie Flickinger was a young girl with a bright smile and bright future. She grew up to be a mother of five young kids, but in 1979 Nellie disappeared from Pennsylvania with a stranger. Her family doesn't even know his name, only that he was a Marine.
"She said she was going back to California," said Joni Laperyouse. "She said she was either going to send for her kids or come back and get her kids. That's the last anybody ever heard from her."
29 years later, Joni is on a mission, desperate and driven by one thing. "Emotion," she said. "This is my dad's sister. My dad's not in good health. My grandmother died looking for her."
Joni took over on a national hunt for the aunt she never knew. "It's been a brick wall the whole time."
Last year, she got a call that would change her life.
"I'd called the local sheriff's department in Pensacola and I said, 'How do you find a dead person?'"
She found her answer in a website called DoeNetwork.org. Joni posted Nellie's information that would be checked against a database of hundreds of Jane Does.
"Within 24 hours of it being posted, Nancy Monahan contacted me and said, 'I think we have a match," Joni said.
The possible match was across the country, in California. In 1982, a woman's body was found in a ditch off I-5 in Colusa County. The Jane Doe was never identified.
The Colusa County cold case was about to heat up.
"We start matching things that may or may not match," said Colusa Sheriff Chief Deputy Kevin Wheeler. Wheeler found Nellie and the Jane Doe with matching height, weight and basic descriptions.
Nellie also has a very specific feature: A motorcycle accident left her with a metal plate in her thigh.
"Our Jane Doe does have a plate in her leg," Wheeler confirmed.
For the first time in 30 years, they had a real lead and a net step. The Jane Doe was buried in the Colusa Cemetery in a grave marked Unknown. Now, to identify her, the bones would have to be exhumed.
The Sheriff's Department had their team tapped and permits pulled for Jane Doe's exhumation, but they were at Mother Nature's mercy. They had to wait for the ground to dry up so they wouldn't disturb other gravesites.
"They finally did it, and it's in the state lab's hands now," Joni said. But the family's wait is far from over. It could take up to a year or more.
"They are just totally underfunded and understaffed," Wheeler said. "They are way behind in their cases."
The final year of waiting for DNA results will bring Nellie's family to the 30th anniversary of her disappearance, and finally, an answer one way or another.
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