Crime Junkie - MISSING: Dawnita Wilkerson

Episode Date: June 13, 2022

When Dawnita Wilkerson stops answering her phone one Sunday in June of 2020, her loved ones know something is wrong – especially because she’s been telling everyone that her ex-boyfriend and one of his relatives have been threatening her. Two years after her disappearance, police and her family are still hoping someone out there will come forward with information they need to solve the case. If you have information about Dawnita, please contact the Evansville Police Department at 812-436-7979, the tip line at 812-435-6194 or the FBI Indianapolis Office at 317-595-4000. You can also email tips to the family at [e-mail] To donate to the family’s GoFundMe visit here National Domestic Violence Hotline: [phone]-SAFE (7233); for TTY: 1-800-787-3224 or Text “START” to 88788 For current Fan Club membership options and policies, please visit https://crimejunkieapp.com/library/.  Source materials for this episode cannot be listed here due to character limitations. For a full list of sources, please visit https://crimejunkiepodcast.com/missing-dawnita-wilkerson/

Hi Crime Junkies, I'm your host Ashley Flowers, and the story I have for you today is about a woman from right here in Indiana, a mother of six who went missing just as things were starting to fall into place for her, and her family knows that someone has the answers that they're desperately looking for. This is the story of Donita Wilkerson. It's Sunday night June 21, 2020, Father's Day, and in Evansville, Indiana, a young woman named Keanna is getting frustrated. She's been trying to call her mom 44-year-old Donita Wilkerson since midway into her night

shift at work. Donita hasn't answered any of her calls since the two of them had gotten into an argument that morning, and Keanna figures that her mom is still mad at her. But Donita still isn't picking up by the time her shift is over. And when Keanna touches base with her siblings and they compare notes, her frustration turns to worry, because it's not just Keanna's calls that are going unanswered. Donita isn't picking up for any of them. No one has heard from her since that morning.

So it's not like we're talking days of no contact here, but for Donita, even a few hours is really unusual. She loves to talk on the phone, day or night she is always calling someone in her large family. And there are other reasons to be concerned. For one thing, Donita has some medical conditions that affect both her physical and mental health, including PTSD and chronic kidney disease. She takes medication and her children quickly find out that she doesn't have any of her

prescriptions with her. They're all at her brother's place, which is where she'd been staying for the past few weeks. Plus, on top of this, her family knows that something, or rather, someone, has been bothering Donita lately. And that's her ex-boyfriend, a guy named Daniel. They had been dating on and off since around 2016, and they actually used to live together. But because of the couple's history, none of Donita's six children are close with

him. You see, Daniel had been physically abusive throughout their relationship. There were even orders of protection in place at various times over the years. But according to Evansville police detective Jeff Hans, the last active order was dropped in July of 2019. They had gotten back together after that, but most recently, they were apart, which Donita's kids were thrilled about. They're hoping that this time it's for good, since Daniel has been non-stop harassing Donita.

And we're not talking about this guy just being annoying or pesky. We are talking about threats to kill her, threats to harm her children, you name it. Tiana told our reporter Nina that her mom had changed her number more than once that year, trying to cut ties with him, although somehow Daniel kept getting it, possibly through some friends of hers. But Daniel isn't the only one Donita is worried about. Over the past few weeks, she had been telling loved ones that she was afraid of two men. That's Daniel and his nephew, Cedric.

She said that Cedric had been sending her threatening messages as well. And I'm not exactly sure what the issue is with Cedric. Her family said that Donita didn't say exactly why there was trouble with him in the first place, just that she was scared of him. And that alone, though, is out of character for her, because Donita is usually fearless. But during this time, she had been trying to get her hands on a gun. In fact, that's why she and Kiana had been arguing earlier that day. Donita had called to ask Kiana if an ex-boyfriend of hers could get a gun for her.

And Kiana got mad because she doesn't speak to the guy anymore, and she didn't understand why her mom was bringing him up. But now, knowing everything that's going on, knowing she can't get a hold of her mom, she starts to wonder if her mom was actually in danger when she called. From Sunday night to Monday, June 22, the siblings contact all of their mom's friends and their aunts and their grandmother, anyone and everyone they can think of. But they keep hearing the same thing. No one has heard from her since early Sunday.

They also reach out to Daniel directly, and he apparently gives them multiple stories. I mean, first, he tells them that he hasn't talked to her in, like, three weeks. But then he says that he last talked to her the very weekend that her family last had contact with her. And then at some point, he says that he thinks she ran off with a man to Illinois. But her family knows that's not the case. Over the last few years, Donita had been through a lot. She was in and out of legal trouble.

She couldn't find housing. She was dealing with this abusive relationship. She had health concerns, again, running the gamut. And she had been trying to get everything back on track so she can be the best mom possible to her kids, who range in age from her 15-year-old twin daughters to her 26-year-old son. And things are really starting to come together for her now. She had lined up an apartment to move into over the summer, and she's even set to start classes that Monday to become a medical assistant.

Donita was so excited for this new chapter to begin, and everyone knows that she'd never voluntarily miss the first day of the training program. But Monday passes, and there's still no sign of her. According to an Evansville police incident report, another one of Donita's daughters, Chiara, reports her missing on Tuesday, June 23rd at 6 p.m. And if you look this case up, you're actually going to see early news reports that say that the report was filed on Monday afternoon, but that's not accurate. Now, Donita had a warrant out for her arrest, and the family thinks that because of that,

police don't take the report of her being missing very seriously at first. Her aunt Faye says detectives seem to think that she was in hiding or something. But the warrant wasn't for a major charge, it was for failing to appear in court. You see, one of her daughters had a medical condition, and she had been in and out of multiple hospitals that spring, so Donita had missed appearances for a case. So it's not like she was running from something. And she wasn't even particularly worried about getting in trouble because she had been in touch with her lawyer, and it sounded like they were working out some sort of arrangement

with the court. Now, Detective Hans told us that the department did take the missing report seriously right away, in part because of how frequently Donita normally spoke with her family. The fact that the contact came to such an abrupt halt makes them think something is up. Plus, her family tells police about her volatile relationship with Daniel, and that they're worried she may be in danger. And as soon as police run Donita's name through the system, they see why.

Daniel had been charged with assaulting Donita multiple times over the years. The Vanderberg County Court records show that he was arrested three times in three months, in March, April, and May of 2018. Then in May of 2019, he was charged in a fourth case. That time, Donita was hospitalized. He pled guilty to the very first charge, which was a misdemeanor. An affidavit from the arrest says Donita told police Daniel wanted her to give him $500, and when she refused, he knocked her on the ground and hit her in the back of the head.

Since he pled guilty pretty quickly in the first case and had that conviction, the following three arrests were felony charges, but they were all dismissed. But according to reporting by Christina Elias of the Evansville Courier and Press, there are some chilling details in the affidavits for those dismissed cases. In one incident, Donita said Daniel had spit on her and choked her. Another time, she said he punched her in the head and face and hit her in the head with a lamp. And in the 2019 incident that she was hospitalized for, she said that he assaulted her for hours

at his home, threatened her with a knife, and wouldn't let her leave. She says that he told her that if she left, he'd send people to kill her children. And the messages that Daniel had been sending her since the breakup were vile. Her family showed us a few texts that she got from him in late March of 2020, and Daniel told her that he had tried to kill another woman and that he wouldn't fail again. Now, Donita's family says he's referring to his ex-wife, and although I don't know many details about what happened because the case was dismissed, Daniel was charged with attempted murder in relation to a domestic violence incident back in 1998.

We also know that he texted Donita, quote, Girls weren't afraid of Ted Bundy or the Green River Killer, but they still ended up dead, end quote. He even tells her that his own niece wasn't afraid of her boyfriend, but that she got killed. And his niece, a woman named Tina, was stabbed to death by a man that she was seeing back in 2010. So these do not sound like idle threats. And obviously, Daniel is at the top of the priority list for police.

Officers go to his house that same night after they take the missing persons report. He's cooperative, at least he gives them permission to search the home, but Donita isn't there. The next day, detectives contact Daniel again, and he's willing to talk. He tells them about his relationship with Donita, saying that they've been dating on and off for several years, and he admits that they've had issues in their relationship, which is the understatement of the year, if you ask me. He also says that even though they broke up, they had still been in contact with each other.

But he hadn't seen her in person since she stopped by his house a few weeks ago. And he insists that he doesn't know anything about her disappearance. In fact, he doesn't think she's really missing at all. He says that she runs off from time to time, and she's bound to just come back eventually. With that, detectives also tried to question Cedric that same day, but they don't have any luck. He says that he's not going to speak to them without his attorney present, though he doesn't actually seem to have a lawyer.

At least Detective Han says that he won't share the name or contact information for any lawyer with police, so basically that's that, they can't do anything. But detectives do manage to learn more stuff from Donita's friends. It seems like she told quite a few people about her fear of Daniel and Cedric. According to Christina Elias's reporting, one friend even said that she last spoke with Donita on Sunday morning, and Donita told her that she was with these two guys. But as damning as all of this is, none of it is enough for an arrest of either man. And on Friday, June 26th, there is a major break in the case, because police get their

hands on Donita's phone records. Police learned that Donita, or her phone at least, were near a motel in Evansville on Sunday, June 21st. Later that night, the phone then pinged a couple of hours away in southern Illinois in the small cities of Marion and Carbondale. When you're driving from Evansville to Carbondale, Marion is on the way, so it takes about an hour and 40 minutes to get to Marion, and then Carbondale is like another 20 minutes west of that.

And it seems that Carbondale was the final stop that night. But the trail doesn't end in Illinois, because on Monday the 22nd, the phone pings back in Evansville, and there hasn't been any activity on the phone since that morning. Now, interestingly, Cedric and Daniel are both from around those areas in Illinois, and they both still have strong ties to that area. So Evansville detectives contact police in Illinois that same day, and the Carbondale and Evansville police departments put out news releases about Donita's disappearance. And I'm not sure why they waited until June 26th to reach out to the media.

It seems like something that should have been or at least could have been done earlier. But by then, Donita's loved ones have already started mobilizing on their own, in part because they don't feel like investigators are really doing anything to find her. So all week long, they've been sharing info on social media, they create an email address where people can send tips, and they've been making flyers and hanging them up all over the place. Friends and family even divide up areas to cover. I mean, Evansville is not a small town.

It's the third largest city in Indiana with about 119,000 people. So they're covering that area, and they also want to saturate southern Illinois with flyers, especially Carbondale. So they got a lot of ground to cover in two states. It's exhausting, and no one is getting much sleep. And it doesn't help that all along the way, Daniel has been taunting them. He apparently tells some of her daughters that she got what she deserved, and that if she's dead, she deserved that too.

And he even calls the cops on them at some point during a confrontation that happens while they're out hanging up missing person posters. And if that isn't bad enough, there are also rumors flying around town. And one of the most predominant is that Donita has been found. Now her family thinks that this rumor was started so that people would stop looking for her. There was another time that a woman posts on Facebook that human remains were found in a dumpster by a seafood restaurant in Kentucky.

The place she was talking about is like right over the state line, maybe like 15 minutes away. And maybe that's why this rumor gains some traction, because hundreds of people start sharing this post, and it seems like every few minutes someone else sends a screenshot of it to Donita's daughters, assuming that it's her. Now her daughters actually reach out to police who contact the local department in Kentucky, and they say they don't know anything about human remains in a dumpster. Like it's not even a real thing.

And then sure enough, the same woman posts on Facebook an update saying that it turns out the so-called human remains are just chicken bones. All of this becomes a huge distraction to the family's search efforts, and it's deeply upsetting. I mean, not only is it devastating to hear things like this, like your mother could be in a dumpster across state lines, but here's the thing I don't think people really comprehend when they talk about this stuff online. People will throw out theories or share posts or flashy headlines that make it seem like

the person's been found or that a killer has been caught. It might be interesting to you, but sharing reports like that that haven't been substantiated by police can hurt the case beyond repair. If someone thinks that a body has been found or a person has been located, they stop looking. Families like Donita's can't afford to lose even a single set of eyes or ears. So remember that, not just for Donita's case, but for every case that you're following online. Social media is a powerful tool and the same way we can all work together to get the right

information out there, false information spreads just as quickly. So again, this is kind of just my PSA of like, be responsible with what you're posting and what you're sharing. Now, speaking of social media, one upside of it is that Donita's daughters get access to their mom's accounts and they pour through them looking for clues in any messages that they can find. And they do notice something strange. Donita had recently started making amends with people that she had fallen out with, especially

relatives. Normally, this would be a good thing, but the tone of the message combined with the timing is honestly troubling to her daughters. The messages are very sentimental, very emotional, and it sounds almost like she's saying goodbye, like she knew something was going to happen to her. And all her family can think about, all they can keep coming back to are the two men that she was afraid of, Daniel and Cedric. So they set out to learn everything they can about the two men that their mom was so afraid

of. First is Daniel. Now, none of Donita's kids were close with him, again, for good reason, and they hadn't really spent any time with him. In fact, Keanna thinks that the first time she met him was when he put her mom in the hospital. They do know that he used to be a pastor of some sort, which is extra disturbing to me, and he's older than their 44-year-old mom, he's like in his early 60s.

And they're not exactly shocked to learn that their mom isn't the only woman Daniel has assaulted. After all, they had already heard stories about him and his ex-wife, but they are surprised to learn the breadth of his violent history. According to court records, from 1987 to 2011 when he was in Illinois, Daniel was arrested at least 22 times for domestic violence-related offenses involving multiple women in four different counties. He had been convicted in seven of the cases.

The rest of the charges were dismissed, including in the attempted murder case that I mentioned earlier. Plus, two of his ex-wives, along with another woman, had filed for orders of protection against him at some point. Now, what they learn about Cedric isn't any more comforting. None of her kids had met him before, but they find out that he had spent years in federal prison for selling drugs, although court records show his original 30-year sentence was reduced, and he ended up serving about half that time.

Prior to that, in the mid-90s, he had been charged with some violent crimes in Illinois, like domestic battery and discharging a firearm at an occupied vehicle, although those charges were all dismissed. They also learn that Cedric and his wife have a real estate business where they buy and flip houses, so they start hunting down addresses for any properties his company might be connected to, figuring that maybe Donita might be at one of them. Now, around this time, the family actually gets a small win. Since Donita is believed to have crossed state lines, the FBI comes on board, although there

aren't many details available about exactly when the agency got involved or how much of a role they're playing. So while the family is tracking down property records, authorities actually have a really strong lead to check out. That motel where Donita's phone pinged on Sunday, June 21. It's a local place on the east side of town that doesn't have the greatest reputation. When they go there, they find out that Donita did check in on June 21. Not only that, but the motel has surveillance cameras in the lobby and outside, and you're

never going to believe this because it never works out this way, but they were actually working at the time. The footage shows Donita arrived that Sunday afternoon in a silver-colored 2004 Chevrolet Suburban with dark tinted windows. When she got there around 3 p.m., she was wearing black leggings and a black t-shirt with a design on it. And we can't tell if she had any luggage with her at check-in because of the security camera angle, but maybe she had a bag in the SUV because by the time she left the motel

a few hours later at 8.16 p.m., she was wearing something completely different, a faded red St. Louis Cardinals t-shirt, blue jean shorts, polka dot socks and sandals, and at the time she was carrying what looks like a small purse, a larger handbag, and a cell phone. And here's the biggest thing that they see. She wasn't alone. There was a man with her. The two of them walked over to the silver suburban, got in, and drove off. But this guy she's with, this isn't just any man.

Police recognize him, along with the SUV of his that Donita had arrived and left in. You see, detectives had been hearing a lot about this guy, from her loved ones ever since she went missing. It was Cedric. When investigators review the surveillance footage, including footage showing Donita's motel room door, they realize that Cedric was the only person there with her. Detective Han says that after Donita checked in, she stayed in the room for the entire five or so hours that they were there.

Cedric, meanwhile, was kind of in and out, although police are not 100% sure if he actually left the motel grounds in his SUV or if he was just leaving the room. But get this, after police get the video footage, they hear from a motel employee who had seen Donita's story on the news. The motel has a policy where if you pay in cash, you have to leave your license at the front desk, basically as collateral when you check in. But the employee tells police that the motel still has Donita's ID from when she checked in.

So even though she, or again at least her phone, made it back to Evansville on Monday the 22nd, it's clear that she never went back to the motel. Now, investigators are gathering this information quickly. It seems like by the end of June at least. But there's a lot that they don't want to share yet. By mid-July, Donita's family sits down for a debriefing with law enforcement. And they find out about the motel and about the type of car that she was in, which at the time was huge news to them, because as far as they knew up to that point, the last

known sighting of her was when she left her brother's house. But Keanu says that in that July meeting, they still weren't told about Cedric being the one seen with their mother at the motel. And they didn't know that the 2004 suburban was his. So they're still in the dark about a lot of things. And what little police do share, they ask the family to keep under wraps for now. After that meeting, one of Donita's aunts tells the Evansville Courier and Press reporter Isaiah Cybert that there is an active criminal investigation going on.

She says there are suspects and that police have already obtained warrants for things like social media accounts. But the summer passes pretty uneventfully. Detectives do get to interview Daniel again in August after he's arrested for failing to appear in court. He's still cooperative, still willing to talk, but he doesn't tell them anything significant. And while there are some leads coming in, none of them pan out.

Although something odd starts happening. Donita's Facebook account is checking in at various places. In the months following her disappearance, Donita's account checks in at five different locations. Four are around Indiana and one is all the way out in Oakland, California. Police say that they do follow up on this, but anyone with her login credentials could be responsible and they don't know how many people have her password. Not to mention, even though police have Donita's phone record, they don't actually have the

phone itself. And I'm sure as many of you who use Facebook know, someone can actually check into a place on social media without actually being there. So it's not clear what this means or even why it's happening. The months go by in a painful blur for Donita's family. Her sons are both in the military and living in Washington state. So the girls all move in with Kiana, who works nonstop to take care of her sisters. No easy feat for a young woman in her twenties.

And Kiara is in the midst of a high risk pregnancy. So overall, the stress level is through the roof. They do what they can to keep their mom's case in the spotlight. They hold special events in the community, they have search parties, they raise money to get billboards up, and they even try and get a reward fund going. Vanderbilt County commissioners even pass a resolution to make September 15th find Donita Day to help raise awareness about her case and missing people in general. They're all trying to hold on to hope that she's alive, but according to a Facebook

post from one of her daughters, police tell them in December of 2020 that they think Donita has been murdered. Then in January of 2021, there's an interesting development. Cedric's wife files for divorce. Police are hoping that because of this, she's going to speak with them now. But like Cedric, she makes it clear that she doesn't want to. It could be that she's afraid of Cedric, but Detective Han says she also just isn't a fan of police in general and doesn't want to share information with them, period.

Which is a problem, because what detectives really want is to locate Cedric's SUV. Daniel has given them permission to search his house three times, once even with a canine unit. But Cedric's still not cooperating, and they haven't gotten a chance to examine the suburban that was seen in that surveillance footage. And it's not because they can't get a warrant. The detectives say they've been able to get every search warrant they've requested. It's because they haven't seen the SUV at all since it was caught on camera that Sunday

in June when Donita disappeared. They know Cedric's not driving it, but they don't know where it is or what he might have done with it. So late in February, Evansville police and the FBI decide to hold a joint press conference. They hope that by releasing some details, it's going to reignite the case, bring in some new leads, just get some renewed interest in this. So this is the first time that the public learns that Donita was last seen at the local motel, and not her brother's house.

But most importantly, law enforcement also shares photos of the surveillance footage, so everyone can see Cedric and Donita getting into the suburban. Though, according to a video of the press conference uploaded by CBS 44, detective Hans doesn't name Cedric, but hi, her family knows exactly who that is. Keanu says, though, that this was the first time that the family sees the images, too, and the first time that they learned that the SUV belonged to Cedric. Knowing how their mom felt about him was bad enough, but actually seeing her get into his car with their own eyes is heartbreaking.

If you're like me, the question you're asking is whether she got into his car willingly. Like she'd openly been saying that she was terrified of this dude for a while. Why is she hanging out with him in a motel for hours and getting into his car? So we actually got a hold of the photos and enhanced a couple of them that were really dark. And I'm going to put them in our blog post for this episode for you to see. Now in one picture, he's holding open the passenger door of the SUV for her to get in. And to her family, they don't think that it's because he was being a gentleman.

They think it looks like he's making her get in. And there's also something interesting, if you look at this one specific picture of her leaving the motel on the night of June 21st, 2020, I'm going to call this out specifically in the blog post. If you're listening to the app, you can see it right now, but it looks like Donita might have a lump or a knot on her head, like some sort of injury, especially if you compare it to this selfie that she took earlier, where you can see that that side of her forehead, there's like nothing there.

So it's not just something that is always there or she always had. Now at this press conference, Detective Hans goes on to say that investigators believe the suburban left the motel and headed west through Southwestern Indiana and into Southern Illinois. He asked the public to be on the lookout for the SUV, especially in Evansville, Marion and Carbondale. Now, Donita's family is glad this information is out there. I mean, again, they want people looking too, but they're upset that police waited all

these months to release the information and they don't understand why. Detective Hans says that he knows the family is frustrated, but that there's a method to their madness and a lot they can't share while they investigate. But I mean, it's possible that if they would have shared that info sooner that they might have gotten some important information sooner, because the very next day after sharing this, detectives get a tip that they should reach out to a police department in a small suburb of Atlanta, Georgia. And when they contact that department in Georgia, the case takes a turn that none of them saw

coming. They find out that Cedric actually reported the suburban stolen way back on August 13, 2020. Cedric told police that he was driving the suburban near a hotel that he was staying at when he started having some transmission or engine trouble. So he pulled over to a grassy area off the roadway by an exit. He says that he locked the SUV up and walked over to the hotel and later he walked back to the place that he left the car, but it was just gone.

So that evening, he and a woman go to the station in Georgia to report it stolen. They pull up in a different car, obviously, and they file a report with police. But get this, when officers investigated Cedric's claim, they couldn't find a single thing to corroborate it. In fact, there's no proof that the suburban was ever at the hotel to begin with. Like police in Georgia check the hotel's surveillance cameras and they didn't see Cedric leaving the hotel parking lot in the suburban. They didn't see him walking back to the hotel.

Like none of his narrative checked out. Not to mention in the spot that he said it was stolen from, there was no broken glass, no tire marks, no evidence at all that a car was ever there. In fact, police were so sure that he was lying, they threatened to charge him with filing a false report. He didn't admit to anything, but he also apparently didn't really deny it either, like he didn't put up a fight. Now I don't know when exactly police in Georgia decided that it was a false claim,

but because of that determination, they didn't enter it into the national database of stolen vehicles. So when investigators on Donita's case would look it up, there was no indication that it had ever been reported stolen. By the way, Cedric filed a claim with his insurance company, which the company paid. They had no clue police considered it a false report until Detective Hans calls them. I can't find a new record of him getting in trouble with his insurance agency over this, but know who does land in some trouble?

Daniel. In October of 2021, he was arrested again for failing to appear in court. And not long after that, his house burns down. So police aren't classifying it as suspicious. I guess his house wasn't in great shape, and according to WFIE 14 news, the fire is ruled to be accidental and electrical in nature. They don't identify Daniel as the person who lives there, but he told authorities that he was in the living room and heard a popping noise in his bedroom, and then he saw the

flames behind his entertainment center. Now Daniel and Cedric are not mentioned by name in any of the news coverage, and police are not calling them suspects at that point. Although I noticed that in the official national missing persons database Namus, not only is Cedric named, but he's referred to as a possible suspect. Though officially when we talked to Detective Hans, he says they have no suspects. And we did try to contact both men for comment. We did get ahold of Cedric, who said that he was busy and would have to call us back

the following day, specifically in the afternoon because he had court in the morning. He was telling the truth about that, his divorce was finalized during that morning court appearance. But he never answered the phone for us again, or returned our calls or any of the text messages we sent. We really wanted to speak with his ex-wife specifically about the SUV because police think that she might have been the woman in the car with him when he reported the suburban stolen. In response to a message that we sent her, she told us that she had no connection to Donita, and that she had already spoken with her family and with detectives, and she's

tired of being harassed about this. She said that she and Cedric were legally married when this whole thing started, but they weren't together. And that he had been seeing another woman who's now his fiance, a woman she referred to as his mistress. Now it's worth noting it's unlikely that this new fiance was the woman with Cedric when he reported the vehicle stolen, because Detective Hans got the body cam footage from an officer in Georgia who spoke with Cedric that night, and the woman with him is black,

and his now fiance is white. So that fiance is not the one in the video. But police can't say for sure that his ex-wife is the woman in the video. And we can't follow up to ask her because after she sent us that message, she blocked us. None of the numbers we found for Daniel worked, although Nina did reach his sister, who's also the mother of the young woman he mentioned in those awful text messages to Donita, his niece who was stabbed to death by her boyfriend.

His sister says that she hasn't seen him in a couple of years and she doesn't have contact information for him, but she does hope that Donita is found. And that's what Donita's family is praying for too. They don't understand why no one has been arrested, even with so much information available. And the last two years have been agony for them. Donita has missed all the big and little moments of her children's lives, including the birth of her first grandchild in 2021. And as if the pain of not knowing anything about their mother's whereabouts isn't

enough, the family suffered another tragedy this past February when one of the six siblings, 25-year-old Kylar, was killed in a pedestrian motor vehicle crash out in Washington. Sometimes it all feels like too much to bear, but they try to keep moving forward knowing it's what their mother would have wanted for them. Police in her family believe that there are people out there who know where Donita is, and the key to solving this case may be in that SUV. Because of that, finding the vehicle is one of the top priorities. It could be in a bunch of different places, including Indiana, Illinois, Kentucky, even

Georgia. But I think a lot of the focus has been on Indiana and Illinois. Bottom line, if you have seen that silver 2004 Chevy Suburban with tinted windows anywhere, please contact authorities. Indiana Wilkerson is five foot three inches tall, and at the time she went missing she weighed about 145 pounds. She has black hair, brown eyes, and multiple tattoos, including a heart on her lower back, praying hands with the name Timmy on her upper right shoulder, and a cross on her upper left

shoulder. All of this information, including pictures, is on our blog post. But if you know anything about Donita's disappearance, please contact the Evansville police at 812-436-7979. Or you can contact their tip line at 812-435-6194, or even the FBI at 317-595-4000. If you or someone you know is a victim of domestic violence, help is available. The number for the National Domestic Violence Hotline is right in our show notes, 1-800-799-SAFE. To see photos and our source material, you can find all of that on our website, crimejunkiepodcast.com.

And don't forget to follow us on Instagram at CrimeJunkie Podcast, and we'll be back next week with a brand new episode. CrimeJunkie is an audio chuck production.