Crime Stories with Nancy Grace - Twin girls Dannette and Jeanette vanish from Augusta

Episode Date: March 13, 2018

The disappearance of twin sisters Dannette and Jeannette Millbrooks from their Augusta, Georgia, neighborhood on March 18, 1990, remains a mystery, but their sister is not giving up in the search for answers. Shanta Sturgis shares with Nancy Grace her family's frustration with the lack of investigation and attention to their case. There is renewed hope as podcasters have taken up the story, helping to raise reward money and publicity that could prompt witnesses to come forward. Laurah Norton and  Brooke Hargrove, hosts of the "Fall Line" podcast join this discussion, along with "UnResolved" podcast host Michael Whelan. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

You're listening to an iHeart Podcast. Crime Stories with Nancy Grace on Sirius XM Triumph, Channel 132. I'll never give up hope. Growing up in rural middle Georgia, when we got home from school, we could get on our bikes and ride until supper time, until it got dark. We could play in the streams. We could play to our heart's content. There was nothing but soybean fields and pine trees as far as the eye could see. Those days are over. Think about it. It starts getting dark. It's time for your children to be home. You call. You blow the car horn.

You look around the neighborhood. And they don't answer. And something inside of you says, This isn't right. This isn't like any other night. That is what happened to two beautiful young twin girls, Danette and Jeanette Millbrook. What happened?

It was a Sunday. The twins left where they lived to just walk up the street to their godfather's home on Forest Street in the Bethlehem neighborhood. The sisters make the walk to Forest Street so their godfather could give them $20 to ride the city bus to and from Lucy C. Laney High School. Okay, that's what we know. Where are they now? I'm Nancy Grace.

This is Crime Stories. Thank you for being with us. With me, Laura Norton, Fall Line Podcast investigator and host. Brooke Hargrove, Fall Line Podcast investigator and host. Michael Whelan, Unresolved Podcast host. And with me, special guest, Shante Sturgis. Shante is the sister of the twin girls, Danette and Jeanette Millbrook. You know, their case was largely ignored at the time they go missing

and has since become a closed file, unsolved, cold. I don't see it that way. First to you, Shante Sturgis. Ma'am, thank you so much for being with us. Do you remember the day your twin sisters disappeared? Yes, ma'am, I do. What happened?

We went to church that morning, and I think we left church, I'd say, around about maybe 12, 30. And we made a home. Before I believe in church the pastor at the church gave my mom money because she didn't have any money to feed us for that day so he gave her money and she sent them to church's chicken i say around about one o'clock they came home and they told, well, Jeanette told my mom that a guy was following them in a white van. We don't know for sure if he was actually following them or not, but that's what they was thinking. He was following them. So that's what they told my mom.

They were 15 at the time. I was 12 when they went missing. Let me interject right here, Ms. Sturgis. At 15 years old, I may not have noticed a white van driving by, but I think I would have noticed if every time I looked up, it was right there. With me is Shante Sturgis, the sister of missing Jeanette and Danette. So they tell the mom they've noticed a white van following them on the way home from Church's Chicken. Then what happened? Nothing really happened after they talked about it. You know, everybody just sat down and ate. And later on in the afternoon, I think it was like around

about maybe 2.30, they was talking to my mom about getting to school that next day which would have been that Monday and she was like she didn't have any money for them to catch the bus and she didn't want them to walk you know to school from where we lived that because the school that they lived that was probably like I say about six miles or so from where we moved to because we just had moved from the area they went missing from. She asked them to call my goddad on the phone and asked him could he give them some money for them to be able to catch the bus back and forth for that week. They left the house.

I'd say around about maybe three. So they made it to his house. From his house, they went to a cousin of ours' house. They asked her to walk home, you know, with them. I'm not sure why. That particular day, her mom told her no. I guess, you know, they left, and that's when they made it to my older sister house when they got to her house they asked her could she walk on home with them at this point

um we're not sure why they asked her we're not sure why they asked my cousin but we just found out recently my sister just now telling us is the reason why she think they asked her. She said because she think they probably was scared to walk back home by themselves for some odd reason. I'm not sure why, because they're not here to tell their side of the story. So after they left my sister's house, my mom had called her and asked her had she seen them because, you know, it was already about, I'd say about 4, 3 to 5 o'clock and they still hadn't made it back home. You know, it don't take that long to get to where they had to go and to get back.

I mean, they wasn't supposed to go to my sister's house that day. They were supposed to go to my goddad's house and come back. But for some reason, they went to her house anyway. She told my mom when they left there that they went walking towards the pumping shop store. Once they went walking towards the pumping shop store, you know, that's the reason why my mom stopped at that store because after they hadn't got home, you know, at the specific time,

and then she done called around, asked if people had seen them, heard from them. She got worried. So me and her went walking to go try to see if we could meet them or meet up with them somewhere or see them somewhere, you know. And by that time, we made it down to the public shop store and it's a lady by the name of Gloria who she knew us and my mom asked her had she seen them come in the store and she told them yeah they came in there they brought candy

soda and something to drink you know some chips um and she said she looked away you know to ring up another customer by the time she looked up they was gone so she said she don't know if they got in the car with somebody she don't know we do know that they made it that far uh hold on with me is a sister of the missing twins danette and jeanette and now the Richmond County Sheriff, the elected Sheriff Richard Roundtree, says this is a, quote, terrible injustice. And he has actually reopened the case of the missing twin girls, Danette and Jeanette now reopened, sat unresolved for so long. These two just walking home from a convenience store in Augusta, Georgia. But unbeknownst to the family, investigators had not even looked at the case for over two decades.

Why? According to the elected chair, Richard Roundtree, the original case files are missing. And not long after the two girls disappear, the girls were taken off the national database for missing children. Why? Why did that happen to Laura Norton Fall Line Podcast? Thank you for being with us, Laura. But what happened? Well, it took us quite a while to kind of unpack that. But what we have figured out is the case was closed on hearsay. And that hearsay changes based on who is describing it. The original investigator.

I don't know what you're saying. Hold on. The case was closed on hearsay. It was allegedly closed on hearsay. According to the original. I don't even know what that means. Well. A case closed on hearsay.

What does that even mean? Here's what the original investigator said. We actually did speak to him on the phone once. So we got some information there, according to him. He says that the twins were found. And he based that judgment on, he alleges that a juvenile investigator or a juvenile probation officer, rather, saw the twins. Now, that is not anywhere in the case file uh there's no support for that he told the family the case was closed because the twins had turned 17 and they could no longer be made to go home

as we know that's not the case he closed it in 1991 in april seven days after their 17th birthday then two years later i completely smell a rat you don't close a missing person, much less a double missing person, of young girls just because they reach majority. That's not even true, Laura. Yep. That's why we were so shocked to hear Shante tell us that. Then when we finally got some information from NCMEC when we spoke with them, he then called in and closed the case there in 1993. Why?

Well, you don't know, and we can't find out. But our guess is that because that is the year he changed jobs, and he may have been going through his files and closing things out here and there. But that, of course, was a major blow to the case because for, you know, 20-odd years, nothing was checked against them. No DNA on file, nothing. I cannot even imagine, back to Shante Sturgis, the sister of the missing girls, I can't imagine the suffering your mom went through finding out the case was closed because somebody claimed they saw the twins. Is that true? Did somebody see them, Shante? No, nobody has never seen them. We actually don't even know if that is true about the probation officer

being in contact with them the whole time because the same probation officer also told my mom that he didn't understand why Richmond County wouldn't go out here to look for them or wasn't doing the investigation. And he was going to try to help her because he didn't understand how two girls go missing and nobody does anything.

Well, who do we know also joining me in addition to Laura Norton from Fall Line is Brooke Hargrove from Fall Line's highly popular podcast and Michael Whelan from Unresolved's highly popular podcast. Brooke, who is this person that he was in charge of investigating over the years of missing persons, but specifically missing children. He seemed to tire of these cases because he said that they would often find these children that were runaways return them to their family only to have them run away again so in his mind these children were in that category he actually referred to them as just two runaways in our recent call with him um he reported that they had been found when that was not true we believe he was trying to clear the case out because he didn't want to investigate them. He seemed to just look at them as two kids from the projects, you know, just got into trouble and were runaways.

Okay, that is breaking my heart because these girls, two sisters, didn't run away and stay away from their mother and their sister and their family all these years. That's not true. That is not true. If you have any information regarding Danette and Jeanette, please call the Richmond County Sheriff 706-821-1060. Repeat 706-821-1060. Repeat. 706-821-1060. Michael Whelan, Unresolved podcast host. Weigh in. Oh, yeah. This is just one of those stories that I first discovered it. There wasn't really any major news coverage of the case, but I moved to Augusta about a year and a half ago,

and I remember when I discovered the story was a kind of like an article that was covering Augusta's missing unsolved cases, basically everything dating back to the 1970s. And hidden right in the middle of it is the story of two twins that disappeared on the exact same day in 1990. And to me, that just always stood out as something that, you know, set this case apart from everything else I've researched. Because when you talk about missing people, it's normally a big deal. People make a big stink about it. And when two or more people go missing, it's, you know, like the Springfield Three is one of the biggest mysteries in America. And that's gotten tons of press coverage. It's gotten news articles. It's gotten news clippings.

And this just had nothing. It's just heartbreaking. Nothing. As the mother sat by with her heart breaking every single day. And I want them to know I love my girls, my family, and I'm hoping that we do get justice where there wasn't none at all. For those of you just joining us, we are investigating the sudden and mysterious disappearance of two young girls from Augusta, Georgia, Danette and Jeanette Milbrook.

For some reason, within the police department, the case was closed. The file disappeared shortly after their disappearance. They were, it wasn't just lost. The two girls were then actively removed from the national database of missing children. So that's not just accidentally losing the file, Laura Norton. It's not just saying, okay, it's a cold case. This is actively going to the national database and removing them. It's no longer an act of omission. It's a decision to remove them from the data bank, Laura. I don't understand it. It was a purposeful choice. And it was very strange because we have mentioned a probation officer, but I want to be clear,

the twins were not on probation. They were not in trouble. The probation officer lived in their neighborhood. And that's why their mother went to him for some help. And this is the man that was blamed after he'd already died for this problem by the original investigator. The twins were homebodies. They were sweet girls. And Danette actually was on seizure medication for grandma's seizures. Certainly not the kind of runaway that you might imagine. Back to Shanta Sturgis, the sister of Jeanette and Danette, the missing twin girls. Now we left off with the story at they were at, you guys went to church that morning. Your mom was broke. The pastor gave her

money for everybody to go out for a fried chicken lunch. They go to Church's Chicken. They make it to a convenience store. That has been verified. And then at that point, Shante, what happens? At that point, my mom, we went back home. My mom called Richmond County, and they told her that in order for her to report them missing that she had to wait 24 hours so she waited the 24 hours they still hadn't came back she still was calling around asking people has they seen them um nobody nobody still had seen them at that

point that next week after is when they sent the investigator out. The investigator came out, you know, to talk. Wait a minute, wait a minute. A whole week passes? Yes, ma'am. Oh, oh, Brooke Hargrove. Oh, man. That's bad.

A whole week passes? Yes, ma'am. This is one in a string of outrageous actions against this family, frankly, by the local law enforcement. To Michael Whelan, host of Unresolved podcast, why a week? I honestly wish I could tell you that. That is what I've covered my fair share of missing persons cases. But this is the first time where there's been the 24 hour waiting period to report two children missing and then days, if not a week, to come out and take statements from the family members. This is so unlike anything, even you know the 1990s i mean at some point when you you start looking at it and hearing all this it almost seems as if the

investigators know more than they're saying because you've got them first saying, you can't report them for 24 hours. Then the detective assigned to it goes, they're just runaways. Then he claims a witness spots them and actively closes the file. The file gets, quote, lost. Then someone goes to the next level of having them removed from the National Database of Missing People. Now we learn an investigator wasn't even sent out for a week. Michael, I mean, is there any explanation for that? I wish I could tell you. Unfortunately, all the, like you said, the original case documents are gone. So we can't even, you know, other than what the family has said since then, there's no record of, you know, when they went out and when they started to actually investigate anything or even what they investigated. This is what we know.

If I could clarify. Go ahead, dear. Nancy, this is Brooke. I'd like to clarify. After the 24-hour waiting period, they did send a beat cop. He took down a few preliminary notes. Almost all of them were incorrect. He incorrectly spelled their name. He took down their birth date wrong, the wrong street they were last seen on, etc. After that, the family didn't hear anything from the police department for a week. And after that week is when they sent out an investigator who came out and said he would be in charge of the case.

So a big cop comes, gets the wrong information, but still an investigator did not come for a solid week. I've been investigating the twins, and this is what I've learned. They were well-known and loved in their small community there in Augusta. They loved music. They loved TV. They were happy. They loved school. They got great grades. They were never known to be troublemakers. They had no history of ever running away. There was no motive at the time for them to run away. It was a normal Sunday. They had no history of mis running away. There was no motive at the time for them to run away. It was a normal Sunday. They had no history of misbehavior.

There was one instance, because one of them was being bullied at a bus stop, that they got into an argument. One time. And that is consistent with what Shante, the sister, has told us, that no trouble, good grades, the works. The mother, Mary Louise Sturgis, has been very involved trying to find her twins. Now understand this. Danette and Jeanette had eight siblings.

And the mom has her hands full as she's trying to find two teen missing girls, apparently getting very little help from the local police. And then the file gets lost. There's a false sighting that's not confirmed, and investigators drop the case without the mom knowing. It just seems to get worse and worse and worse. I want to tell you something that I've learned about Jeanette and Danette Milbrooks. In the world of these two twins, Jeanette and Danette, they spend a lot of time on their front porch in Augusta, Georgia. Just the way we would sit on my grandmother Lucy's front porch outside of

Macon, Georgia, watching the world go by, talking, being together. That was where these two twins loved to be. And according to their cousin, she can still remember their smiles with her eyes closed. Then one day, both of them, they leave that porch and they vanish. The mystery has never been solved. The cousin says I love them and I will never stop looking for them until the day I die. Shantae Sturgis, their sister, is with us now. Shantae, tell me about how their disappearance affected your mother. It has affected her tremendously because she has, I mean, you know how some people get around and they're like her age, she's 63 now. They went missing when she was in her 30s. So she don't get around like most people do.

It has took a toll on her pretty much. Some days we used to be at home, you know. I know we have to go to school. We get from school. Sometimes she'll be in the room, you know, crying know we have to go to school. We get from school. Sometimes she'll be in the room, you know, crying, and we can see her crying. It just, it did something to her, so sometimes she was giving up hope, you know, and I used to have to tell her, look, mama, you know, we're going to have to keep going. We're going to have to keep trying. Everybody ain't going to tell you,

no. So she kept trying to call down there to the police department to get somebody to help. And they would always tell her no. So she would sit around for years and years and years would go by. And by the time I turned 19, I just started doing it myself. I said, look, everybody ain't going to tell you no. I said, I got to try to do something. We got to try to do something. So I started calling down it myself. I said, look, everybody ain't going to tell you. I said, I got to try to do something. We got to try to do something. So I started calling the nine in myself from the age of 19 all the way up to now,

and I'm 40 years old. It was just before their birthday. The twins headed out to visit their family friend. Their little sister, then 12, Shante, begged to go with them. But being the older sisters, they said no. Just like my sister and brother would tell me. We've pieced together the fact that they go to a local pump and shop gas station. It's also a convenience store.

And it's there at the intersection of 12th Street and MLK Boulevard in Augusta. They go inside. They get chips and drinks. The store clerk positively identifies them being there and that they were fine. It was about 4.30 in the afternoon on a Sunday. The clerk got busy at the cash register. She saw the girls leave. She caught a glimpse of a vehicle outside, not enough to give a description or to say whether the twins got into the vehicle. But we know this, they disappeared.

They disappeared and have never been seen again. To Laura Norton, Fall Line podcast host, since the case has been reopened, what kind of searches are going on? None. So what's the point of reopening it? There wasn't. Well, that's what I wondered when I stumbled across the case. I truly believe this is not the only case that had this sort of treatment in Augusta. I want to be clear about that.

Many missing persons cases of minors were mishandled during that period and closed prematurely. Hearsay was involved. Nothing has happened. An investigator was assigned in 2013 briefly, took DNA from Shante and her mother and their sister, who was fully related to the twins in terms of them having both the same mother and father best DNA sample and began some preliminary research but then she left the department and at the time that we began looking into the case no one was assigned to it and no further action had been taken. Are you suggesting that it was only reopened because of pressure from your podcast Fall Line? Well it was reopened in 2013, and that was when the new sheriff was elected, Richard Roundtree. And Shantae directly contacted the sheriff's office at that point and asked them to do so.

He was reaching out to the community, asking what he could do. But between 2013 and June of 2017, when we began our podcast, nothing further had happened. Agree or disagree, Michael, with unresolved? Yeah. Richmond County so far has really done nothing to inspire any confidence that the investigation is going somewhere, in my opinion. I've tried reaching out to them. I've called. I've sent emails. I've even tried filing a Freedom of Information Act not too long ago, and I haven't even heard back on that. So as far as I know, there is no movement on the case, and I'm not even sure if anyone is openly investigating the case as of this moment.

They are not. There was someone assigned, but they've recently been moved to another department. We know because we do regularly contact them with leads and information that we develop, and there's no one currently assigned to the case. Take a listen to this. Once I took a look at the case, I saw that there was a grave misjustice done to that family. The individual working that case inadvertently closed the case for whatever reason, and the case shouldn't have been closed. Back to Shantae Sturgis, the sister of Danette and Jeanette.

Shante, that day that you realized your sisters were gone, what do you remember about that day and that night as the hours began to pass and they didn't come home? My mom pacing up and down and just kept asking. I I kept, you know, I was up with her. My other sister was up with her. She just kept talking about it, you know. And finally everybody went to sleep and we got up to go to school that next morning. When we got home from school, we asked them had they came back home. And she was like, no, she hadn't heard from them.

I said, well, have you heard from the police? Did they say anything, and she was like, no. She hadn't heard from them. I said, well, have you heard from the police? Did they say anything? And she was like, no. So, like I said, that next week, when they did send the cop out there, they got the information about the clothes they had on that day, where they were going, and whoever they had contact with that day. Did they have boyfriends and things of that nature? He would ask her questions like that, but we didn't really get no investigation out of anything, even when the investigator did come out.

Only thing he did was go to the school and talk to the people at the school that they attended, which was Luselana High School. He talked to some of the kids there. I think they said he talked to the principal there, and the principal's spokesman told him that he seen the girl standing on the corner, and when he called their name, they just took off running. But that was never confirmed.

This is what the investigator said. But he never went to the convenience store to talk to miss gloria he never went and talked to my sister he never talked to my cousin them that day everybody they had had contact with them the day they went missing he never talked to on people he talked to was the people at the school, that claimed that they saw them standing on the corner. Or they claimed, he said they seen them in the bottom, which is a project that's called Underwood Homes. They were supposed to be down there. And then they said that they were supposed to have been at somebody's house in a project called Delta Mantaor where my mom, she stays there now. They had a couple of friends that did stay down there, but they really didn't go to many

places, you know. And whenever we did go anywhere, all of us went together. Just that particular day, everybody just had came home from church and, you know, my mom was getting everybody ready for school the next day she wanted to feed everybody before they went to bed and she sent them out and it ain't like you know people might say okay well why we do that to 15 year old was walked but I used to walk and I was 12 years old and we used to walk going to friends house or whatever back then also we wasn't the only ones that was doing it you know we didn't think that nothing was gonna happen she didn't

know that they wasn't gonna come back home that day well i did too shantae all over the neighborhood out in the middle really of of nowhere here's a question to brooke harve. Brooke, apparently it's believed that the girls got enough money to take a bus to a high school. Do we know if they got on the bus? Did that happen? No, ma'am. So they were collecting some money from their godfather to use to take the bus to the high school each day the following week. The last time they were seen was at the convenience store, which would have been around 4 or 5 p.m. They were never seen again. Any reports that they were seen came directly from the original investigator, who it has been shown that he has fabricated some details in the past in order to be able to close the case.

We don't believe they made it very far past the convenience store, and they certainly never got on a bus and went to school again. Well, they were apparently real homebodies. And my question is, how do two teen girls just disappear at the same time? I mean, it would be very difficult to control two teen girls that don't want to get in your vehicle or don't want to go with you from the convenience store to their home. To my understanding, it's less than a mile. And most of that would have been along MLK Boulevard. I've been on MLK a hundred times, and it's a very busy street.

And at that time, it would have still been daylight outside. So how in broad daylight do two girls on a very busy street get dragged into a car by a random kidnapper? It says to me it had to be somebody that they knew. What about that, Laura Norton? I think that's the most likely scenario. The only other and less likely option, there was a serial rapist operating in the neighborhood at the time who was... You mean Washington? Yes, ma'am. And take George...

Sorry, Joseph Patrick Washington. And he was taking people off the street busy times of day with a gun. But once again, as you say, two people. So the most likely scenario is it would be someone that they knew. They did not take rides from strangers. They were not hitchhikers. Now with Washington, would this have been his MO compared to victims, time of day, a Sunday, and weren't the victims found with Washington as opposed to Jeanette? Jeanette never found. Well, it kind of was across

the board. They would have been in the victim pool in a large and broad way. They were a little younger. The time of day was a little later. But some of Washington's victims were found where he left them, but a few people were found fairly far away. But you're right, as far as we know, they were found. Question back to Shantae Sturgis, the sister of the missing girls, Danette and Jeanette Milbrooks. Shantae, question. I know that you finally took it over from your mother because she was just exhausted with trying to get the police to act in this case

and that you call them, call them, call them incessantly until a sheriff finally agrees to look into it. Only discovered the case had been closed for years. When you would call them, Shante, when you would call police, what would they say to you? Crazy stuff. That wasn't true. I called down there a couple of times. They told me my mom's kids had got taken away from them. I needed to call to the defects office to find out information from them. Well, that wasn't true because you were there with your mother and all the eight brothers and sisters. They were not taken away, and there have been no claims of child protective services in that home.

I can't believe one of them even said that okay what else okay so after i called i did what they said i called defects defects told me to call foster a foster home um they probably was adopted out or something so um they gave me a phone number to call some adoption agency that was in Atlanta, Georgia. I called that adoption agency and they told me, well, I don't know what they, why would they tell you to call us? Cause we wouldn't be able to give you any information anyway, if they did. But they told me because I was the sister said, oh, the only way they would give me information is I filled out paperwork and they was going to mail the paperwork to me, which they did.

But I never filled it out or sent it back because I already knew what was stated wasn't true. Wait, let me understand what you're saying. Are you telling me, Shantae, police told you to call an adoption agency? Like your teen sisters were adopted that day? The police told me to call defect they said um because they that from their recollection whatever they but they saying the case file was closed now they didn't have them in the file but from whatever he was saying the guy that i talked to i don't know his name but he told me from what he was saying that my mom's kids had got taken away. Maybe you called the defense office because they probably, by now, they've

probably been adopted out because they had been so many years from 1990 to the time that I started looking for them. Oh, like seven years later. Oh, oh, oh, that's killing me that's killing me brooke hargrove she's trying to find her sisters and police say call defects they all know that children are in the home the other eight children are in the home they know the children have not been removed from the home. And then they suggest, DFAC suggests, the girls were adopted. That's ridiculous. Absolutely. Even if children had been removed from the home and attempted to be adopted out, the biological mother has to sign paperwork terminating her parental rights,

which, of course, Shante's mother never did. It's totally absurd. I just, I don't understand why they would even say that. So Shante, you know, DFACS, Department of Family and Children's Services, and we have confirmed this, was never called to the home. The children were not put up for adoption and the fact that they would say this is another black eye to the police why would they have said that instead of saying talking to you about the investigation shantae exactly that's what i asked them i said and then

furthermore why didn't y'all give her a chance to get her kids back if y'all felt that any of the kids was in danger? Why y'all left the other kids and just took two kids out of the home? I said that doesn't make any sense, sir. Well, it's all a big lie because we know the current sheriff has reopened a missing person possible homicide case. So that's totally a lie. That brings me to my question, Laura Norton, why the lie? Well, I think that this is a long culture of apathy and incompetence. And when we speak to the adoption case, there was someone in the system with a similar last name.

There was not enough effort put into checking that to look at the first name and see, of course, it's not the twins. And I really think in this case, although it seems horrible and unbelievable, it has simply been a long string of incompetence, apathy, and not caring about young, poor girls of color in Augusta, Georgia. Shantae, question. Do you believe your sisters are alive? At this point, I'm not sure. I want to believe they are. I always had hope all these years that they are. But right now, I'm not sure. You know, years and years, like almost 30 years now, and we still haven't found anything. And I think had the Sheriff's Department did something back then in 1990, we probably wouldn't be where we're at. We probably know something by now, but I never give up. I said, I'll keep on going and keep going

until we can at least find something out because somebody out there knows something. They just disappeared and nobody knows anything. The heartache year after year of not knowing where your children are, what happened to them. But according to Shante Sturgis, the sheriff reopened the case, but nothing else has happened. Has anything happened, Shante, since he said he wouldened the case, but nothing else has happened. Has anything happened, Shante, since he said he would reopen the case? They opened the case back up in 2013.

Okay, two months after that, the investigator who they sought over the case, she was no longer at the police department anymore. They said she had moved on to, I guess, a different public agency or whatever. So after that, for months and months and months, them went by and we haven't heard from them. We called to find out what was going on, but we still got the same thing. They said that they was waiting for somebody with information to contact them. And I'm like, you know, why would y'all wait? I said, it's been already 23 years that they've been missing so far. And y'all talking about waiting.

What are y'all waiting on for somebody to come down? I said, if anything, they would have been came down here by now and lo and behold some months after I had called them that's when I got contacted on Facebook by Brooke and Laura and from that point on they've been doing the investigation it hasn't been the police department so I think if had not they contacted me we'd still be back in 1990 which i still feel like we are because they still ain't doing anything brooke hargrove uh one of the producers

of fall line podcast along with laura norton with us now michael wheelan host of the Unresolved podcast, Brooke Hargrove, question about something I've learned. I understand an investigator agreed to meet with you after you uncovered new leads, but on the condition you don't discuss the case and you were not allowed to ask any questions. The family could come, but only if they asked no questions. Is that true? That's true and unfortunately when we did show up for the meeting it was myself and Laura and Shante and her mother Miss Louise. Once we showed up we were told there were too many people that only two people would be allowed to attend the meeting. So I had to go in and make the evidence presentation. Shante went in because she's been

heading the case since age 19. And Miss Louise, who had never had an in-person meeting about her children's case since 1990 ever, she's never had one ever ever was made to sit in the lobby and wait while this meeting took place i just don't even know what to say to that brooke how horrible it is brooke you on behalf of fall line podcast have developed new leads what are are they? We have several, Nancy. We started first looking into the Joseph Patrick Washington connection because his victim profile is very similar to Jeanette and Danette. There have also been some Jane Does recovered in the Aiken, South Carolina area, which is very close geographically to Augusta. They're kind of like sister cities.

One of them, Shante saw a reconstruction on the news in the, I believe, late 90s. And she thought to herself, my goodness, that person looks so much like Jeanette. She called Richmond County. She said, I just saw a Jane Doe reconstruction on the news. Looks like my sister. They said, oh, no, that wasn't the twins. Although they could never explain to her how they came to that conclusion because they didn't have any materials for testing until 2013 when they reopened the case. We were able to contact the coroner in Aiken County, South Carolina, and he is currently running a comparison between that Jane Doe, who is still unclaimed, and Jeanette. We're waiting on results. Laura Norton, what more can you tell me? We also looked into various people who would have been part of the twins' lives, gathered information on them, and passed that along to law enforcement as well. To Michael Whelan, what do you make of it? Well, at the moment, it's just really hard to overlook, you know, how many leads there were,

how many suspects that police should have investigated, but they spent 23 years not following up on any of them. So, like Lauren Brooke have hinted at, there was the connection to Joseph Patrick Washington, who was a serial rapist that lived in the neighborhood. But there were so many different serial offenders that lived in the surrounding area, and none of them were really investigated. And it's just, right now I'm looking at some cases from around the vicinity of where the twins lived. And it's like you said, it's just hard not to get frustrated with how much is out there to be investigated and police did none of it.

For those of you that are hearing our public plea for information on the disappearance of these two girls, Jeanette and Danette Milbrook, please contact CrimeOnline.com. 7 4 6 3 9 0 9 4 9 2 7 4 6 3 9 0 9 4 9 crime to Laura Norton. What is your fall line podcast tip line? Our tip line is that 4 0-590-2975. And Michael Whelan with the Unresolved podcast. Michael, do you have a tip line? What is it? Yes, I do.

It is 831-200-3550. Laura Norton with Fall Line Podcast. Is it true that you have actually managed to raise thousands of dollars? Yes, our listeners have raised $8,000, which the sheriff's office told Shante's family they would announce. They have now declined to announce it. So now we are once again crowdsourcing to raise enough money for a billboard. I don't understand why am I even paying tax dollars if they won't even announce the reward you guys managed to scrape up? Take a listen to this.

The reward cases are started through private funding, and then we locate funding to try to match that case based on the level of commitment that someone has already done. It's so much stuff that has been said and done over the years. It just upsets me to the point I'd be willing to curse, but I refrain from it.

When we went to go meet him, we was thinking, he said he wanted to treat the case if it was his own family. So I'm like, if this is how you treat your family, I want to be in KSA if it was his own family. So I'm like, is this how you treat your family? I don't want to be in your family because it's crazy. You said you was going to help us, but now all of a sudden we get the reward money,

which I think he didn't think that we were going to be able to get it. I think that's what it was. And now that we got it, even if they can't match the reward, all we want them to do is announce it. I had to go out here and put up flyers with reward on there by myself. You know, I got a Facebook page up with my sister and them on it asking people, you know, in the community to come out. But I think had Richmond County got some involvement in it and announced it on the news, maybe I would have had more people to come out to help. But then nobody show up but me and Michael. So I gave him some of the flyers and me and my kids went out and put some of the flyers up. And we are planning an event on the

18th, the anniversary of their disappearance in March in Augusta. Well, I know this. Crime Online will help, as will I. I strongly believe that the FBI needs to be involved in this disappearance and the investigation of what went wrong within the Richmond County Sheriff's Office. Shante Sturgis. The FBI was contacted by my mom, and they told her they couldn't do anything to help her because their original investigator said they had been found. Well, you know what? Since that's not true, maybe they can reconsider. Nancy Grace, Crime Stories, signing off.

Goodbye, friend. You're listening to an iHeart Podcast. Goodbye, friend.