The Deck - Andrea Durham (Ace of Clubs, Florida)
Episode Date: February 7, 2024Our card this week is Andrea Durham, the Ace of Clubs from Florida.Revisiting a place that holds bad memories isn’t for the faint of heart. Just pulling up to a specific location can bring on anxiet...y about the past trauma that once took place there. Even decades later, that sinking feeling doesn’t go away. Until recently, Ashyea Durham Pugh hadn’t been back to the scene since that mostly blocked-out memory was her cruel reality. That night she and her mom returned home to their apartment to find that her little sister had vanished without a trace. And as the anniversary of that fateful February passes, her uneasiness grows. Because February 1st, 2024 has come and gone. No one has seen Andrea Durham in 34 years. And whoever took her could still be out there.If you know anything about the disappearance of Andrea Durham, please contact Emerald Coast Crime Stoppers at 850-863-8477, or visit their website to submit a tip anonymously. Let us deal you in… follow The Deck on social media.Instagram: @thedeckpodcast | @audiochuckTwitter: @thedeckpodcast_ | @audiochuckFacebook: /TheDeckPodcast | /audiochuckllc The Deck is hosted by Ashley Flowers. Instagram: @ashleyflowersTikTok: @ashleyflowerscrimejunkieTwitter: @Ash_FlowersFacebook: /AshleyFlowers.AFTo apply for the Cold Case Playing Cards grant through Season of Justice, visit www.seasonofjustice.org. Follow The Deck on social media and join Ashley’s community by texting (317) 733-7485 to stay up to date on what's new!
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Our card this week is Andrea Durham, the ace of clubs from Florida.
February 3 was National Missing Persons Day, and in order to bring awareness, Audio Check
has been doing something a little special this week that actually started with Andrea.
While digging into her case, we discovered that she was one of 36 missing kids that were
featured in Soul Asylum's music video for their song, Runaway Train.
Twenty-one of those cases have been resolved thanks to that video, and we want to help
raise that number.
In doing so, multiple audio check shows will be telling the stories of those on the list
who still remain missing.
So, if you haven't tuned in yet, we released a bonus episode on Crime Junkie yesterday,
highlighting seven more of those cases.
Seven stories all in one episode.
And then Dark Down East will be releasing an episode on one of the cases tomorrow.
And I'm going to tell you about Andrea's story right now.
Last Thursday, February 1st, 2024, marked 34 years since Andrea Durham disappeared
during a routine chore in her own home. And whoever took her could still be out there.
I'm Ashley Flowers, and this is The Deck. වවවවවවවවවවවවවවවවවවවවවවවවවවවවවවවවවවවවවවවවවවවවවවවවවවවවවවවවවවවවවවවවවවවවවවවවවවවවවවවවවවවවවවවවවවවවවවවවවවවවවවවවවවවවවවවවවවවවවවවවවවවවවවවවවවවවවවවවවවවවවවවවවවවවවවවවවවවවවවවවවවවවවවවවවවවවවවවවවවවවවවවවවවවවවවවවවවවවවවවවවවවවවවවවවවවවවවවවවවවවව� When Roseanne Sterling returned to her apartment a little after 9pm on February 1, 1990, she
reached in her purse to grab her key, probably out of pure habit.
She always locked the door when she left her 13-year-old daughter Andrea
home alone. And that evening had been no exception when she and her 15-year-old daughter Asha
left for a meeting around 7.30. But when her hand met the knob, it wiggled slightly, like
it had already been unlocked. Weird, maybe, but she had no need to worry yet. She had
to remind herself that her once little girl was now a young teen becoming more and more independent by the day.
But when Roseanne stepped inside, she saw something that seemed out of place, which made her unnies
grow.
It was the vacuum.
Here's Okaloosa County Sheriff's Office Senior Investigator Kelly Henderson.
According to the family, no matter who vacuum the residence,
the vacuum would immediately be put back in its place
upon completion and it was in the middle of the floor,
which was very uncommon.
Rosanne had asked Andrea to clean up,
but something about this felt unsettling.
I mean, the vacuum was just standing there
as if her younger daughter
had been abruptly interrupted
mid-chore.
Rosanne's eyes darted around the room
looking for any other signs that she should be concerned.
But there were none.
No broken windows, no overturned tables or chairs.
I mean, there was still even cash sitting out
and Andrea's pricey tennis equipment
hadn't even been touched.
Trying to suppress their growing worry, both mom and daughter made their way to Andrea's
room to check things out. But it was more of the same. Nothing appeared to be out of place.
It looked the exact same way it had since they recently moved in, a classic pre-teen bedroom.
According to reporting from Northwest Florida Daily News, stuffed animals decorated the dresser and bed, and pictures of celebrities torn from magazines were taped on her baby
blue walls.
Her clothes were all neatly organized in the closet, even her jacket and purse were there.
And you might be thinking who needs a jacket in Florida, right?
But it was a February evening.
And for a Fort Walton Beach girl, it was cool enough for a light jacket so they knew Andrea
wouldn't have gone far without it, or without her bag, and, of course, her latest obsession,
her makeup.
All of that was still in the apartment.
All signs pointed to the fact that Andrea would be back any minute.
And so honestly, the predominant feeling in the family was mostly agitation, that she
seemingly had run off without leaving behind a note.
But 30 minutes passed, then an hour, and then three.
Agitation left and fear swooped in to take its place.
After waiting it out for those few hours, Roseanne decided that she needed to call police
to report Andrea missing.
It was just after midnight by the time she made the call, and investigators from the
Okaloosa County Sheriff's Office arrived at the apartment just minutes later. However,
despite the quick response time, they were kind of operating under the assumption that Andrea
may have just decided to stay out late or had even run away. Because even though she had never left home in the past,
the more they learned about what was going on
in her life at the time,
the less they believed Val play was involved.
You see, police had learned
that she'd recently gotten into some trouble.
Two months before,
some kids that she'd been hanging out with
were caught stealing things from cars.
And although Andrea hadn't done
any of the actual breaking in and theft, she had acted
as the lookout.
She was facing probation and was set to appear in juvenile court within the next couple of
weeks.
Though it's worth noting that it seems likely her punishment would have just been some community
service.
We're not talking like severe jail time or anything here.
But this wasn't even the only thing going on in her life.
See, the family had only moved into this apartment complex less than a month prior.
Roseanne and Andrea had been living in another area, a Fort Walton Beach, and Asha had been
living with her dad in Pensacola.
So both girls were forced to move schools.
And as you can imagine, this caused a bit of a stir.
Obviously, a stressful situation for two teens to have to start over again in unfamiliar territory.
And Andrea in particular had not been too happy about it.
And believe it or not, she had actually just started at prior middle school the very day she went missing.
So according to her family, she had been moody that morning and did not want to go to the new school.
But she did end up going begrudgingly. family, she had been moody that morning and did not want to go to the new school.
But she did end up going begrudgingly.
So it's all of this that played into police's narrative that she could have had a reason
to want to run.
Now despite having her own doubts, Asha told us that she went along with the idea that her
sister could have left to just hang out with friends, or at least she went along with it at first.
But talking to her today in hindsight,
she says that that story didn't really make sense to her.
Yeah, Andrea was bummed about having to switch schools,
sure, but she didn't seem to be phased
by getting into trouble.
So she wouldn't have wanted to run away
just to get out of some community service.
And again, Andrea would have never left her makeup.
That's the thing she keeps pointing back to.
But more than anything, running away
just didn't fit with Andrea's personality.
She was very skittish.
She didn't like taking the trash out by herself.
I don't see her walking around the streets by herself.
I was always much more
brave than she was. So that's unlike her character, to just walk off. She was godly. Like when they
used to do the commercials about send your money to Africa, she would send her money. She prayed
a lot, which for someone younger not to be raised in the church was pretty unique, I thought.
for someone younger not to be raised in the church was pretty unique, I thought.
I consider her a goody-tashies as an older sister.
Early that same morning, investigators drove around town
to search for Andrea to see if they could quickly locate her.
They also canvassed the apartment complex,
searching for the missing teen,
and they started speaking to neighbors
who may have seen or heard something
between 7.30 and 9.15 p.m.
But no one they spoke to saw or heard a thing.
No suspicious vehicles, no commotion, nothing.
Same thing with workers
at the nearby convenience store they checked.
There is, however, some controversy
about how well the apartments were actually canvassed.
Asha said her mom claimed many of her neighbors weren't actually spoken to back when Andrea
first went missing, and she felt she had to pick up the slack. She even started a petition urging
police to question everyone in the large complex. Investigator Henderson said she didn't remember
seeing anything in the case file regarding this petition, so it's unclear if it pushed police to try and talk with more
of Andrea's neighbors or what. However, the notes she did see
indicated detectives knocked on doors and talked to everyone
who was available at the time. Now, that first week, there was
at least some consideration given to the idea that maybe
someone else was involved in Andrea's disappearance.
We know this because investigator Henderson said that there are reports that detectives
scanned the area for sexual offenders in an attempt to rule out any of them who may have
lived or worked close to the neighborhood.
They even went as far as making some house visits, checking to see if there were any
signs that Andrea was with any of them or had been at some point.
But in doing this, they found nothing. None of these people were considered persons of interest.
I think one of the main reasons this case
was so frustrating for law enforcement
is that there was so little evidence,
not only at the scene, but they also didn't see
or have any witnesses that placed her in a vehicle
or in the company of anyone.
And we also didn't have a lot of surveillance cameras
like we have today, we have the ring doorbells and that you might be able to canvas the area for. Back then, we also didn't have a lot of surveillance cameras. Like we have today, we have the ring doorbells
that you might be able to canvas the area for.
Back then we just didn't have that available.
That new voice is Nicole Hodgskins,
the Emerald Coast Crime Stoppers Coordinator.
She's the one who's been filtering through any tips
coming in on Andrea's case today.
Asha and our reporter Madison traveled back
to the neighborhood, including the old apartments
to get a better feel for the setup there.
And this wasn't like one apartment building or anything.
It's pretty big with nine buildings, mostly two stories each and a lot of places to park.
The family's apartment building was at the back of the complex.
You can find pictures on our blog post for this episode.
There are no other buildings directly behind Andrea's apartment, there's just a grassy
yard area and a road close by.
Asha said if anything, that area would have been even less populated back in 1990, so
it would have potentially been easy for an outsider to come in undetected.
But that was the thing, there was no evidence that someone had come in.
And even though it had now been almost a week since Andrea vanished, they were still considering
the idea that maybe she did leave on her own.
So police spoke to her friends and classmates, hoping that one of them might know who she
was with or where she was.
But they learned nothing of significant interest.
So they really had to consider the possibility
that she could have been abducted by someone in her family.
I mean, statistically, that would be the most plausible.
Andrea's parents were divorced
and police wondered if there could have been a brewing
custody battle.
But almost as soon as that idea came to them, it was quickly ruled out.
Andrea's father had no idea where she was and was putting in a lot of effort to help
find his daughter.
It looks like the biological father also hired a private investigator who actually cooperated
fully with the Occluse County Sheriff's Office investigators.
Of course, Roseanne and Asha were quickly ruled out too.
They helped distribute flyers and push out news releases
with Andrea's information.
Her family also helped look for Andrea
in areas surrounding the apartment complex.
In our area, we really have so many wooded areas,
lots of recreational areas.
It's like searching for a needle in a haystack.
Days passed then weeks, then months with no sign of Andrea.
Any notion that she had willingly run away
faded with the passage of time, which left
one terrifying possibility.
Andrea was abducted.
To me, it seems like it's a crime of opportunity.
Maybe somebody was casing the parking lot
and saw mom leave, saw sister leave,
knew that she was in there by herself,
knocked on the door back in the 90s.
Yeah, it's not uncommon.
Even for a 13-year-old, open the door,
and then it seemed as if she was just yanked right then and there
and pulled away.
It's also possible that she opened the door for someone she was familiar with.
Investigators learned that Roseanne had a schedule where she tended to be gone many nights
during the week between seven and nine. So even though the family hadn't been in the area for
very long, it's totally possible someone could have caught wind
of her usual routine and knew that there was often
at least one teenage girl, sometimes both,
left behind at the apartment.
I see her going with them if they said,
hey, something's happened to your mom and your sister,
and you need to come with me.
I totally would see her going and doing that.
Who knows what kind of ruse the individual may have used to gain entry into the apartment.
You know, like maybe it was, I'm a handyman, I'm here to fix something,
or could you help me come with this? I've got a flat tire or anything.
We don't know what approach was used that could have possibly given them access
to get her out of the apartment.
Even though months passed with no word from her sister,
Asha held on to the hope that she could still come back one day.
And this was more than just blind hope.
Sometime after Andrea vanished,
her mother met and eventually married a man
who had a story of his own to tell.
As a teenager, he ran away from home
and eventually reunited with his family about 20 years later.
He was gone years and years and years,
and I said, how could you be gone that long
and not want to come back?
And he was like, well, I just thought nobody was looking for me anymore.
And he said, and after a while, I thought,
what am I going to say?
Just show up.
So for a long time, that was my hope story.
And obviously, as years went by,
I don't think anything would keep her away that long.
As you can imagine, that first year after Andrea's disappearance was tough for Asha
and her mom.
Roseanne held on tight to the only child she had left, which over time felt suffocating.
Tensions were high, so much so that Asha moved out of her mother's place at the young age
of 16.
She just couldn't deal with the stress of her mother's constant worries over her well-being.
For the next few years, buzz around Andrea's disappearance was nothing but a low hum since
no new information was coming in about what may have happened to her.
But according to an article by People Magazine, in the early 90s, before the age of Amber
Alerts and social media, Andrea did get some newfound attention from a rather unexpected source.
Popular rock band Soul Asylum released a music video for their hit song
Runaway Train, which aired on MTV. According to an article from CNN and Northwest Florida
Daily News, the band featured, quote, powerful vignettes of about 36 children who have gone missing.
And that included Andrea.
Apparently there was more than one version of this music video, as it was said to have
been re-cut multiple times in order to highlight a diverse array of missing children.
And while we weren't able to track down a copy of the version with Andrea in it, and
neither could her family, we were told that one definitely existed
at some point in time.
Problem is we just can't see it or vouch for its validity.
In a Guardian article from 2022, it says, quote,
"'The first to come home was Elizabeth Wiles,
"'a teenager who'd run away from home with an older guy.
"'She'd been watching TV with friends,
"'seen herself in the runaway train video
"'and called her mom.
Some cases were very sad.
They didn't come back because they were dead.
But each time a kid was found, we'd
recut the video with a new missing person.
We eventually found 21 of the 36 kids we featured."
End quote.
But unfortunately, Andrea wasn't one of them.
Asha and Roseanne never stopped searching
for a face in the crowd.
No matter how far they went,
no matter how unlikely it seemed,
they couldn't help but check out other people passing by,
praying that one of them could be their person.
Definitely in the first five, six, seven, 10 years,
you know, that was a constant thing. And in the very five, six, seven, ten years, you know, that was a constant thing.
And in the very beginning, you know,
my mom went all over the country looking after leads
and whatnot, but anytime I see a couple little actresses
that just have that innocent look in their face,
and my girl is one of my camera and her name,
but anyway, she looks just like her the way her mannerisms are
and the way that she acts.
That's how Andrea was. You see that in certain people, and it just like her the way her mannerisms are and the way that she acts. That's how Andrea was.
You see that in certain people
and it just reminds you of her.
Asha and Roseanne even published emotional letters
addressed to Andrea in the local paper,
letting her know that she was loved and missed,
begging her to come home.
They still have these newspaper clippings
preserved in a binder stuffed with mementos
and records of Andrea's case today.
And her mom even kept a journal and timeline of the happenings in her daughter's case
so that she would never forget the details, no matter how many years passed.
And many years did pass.
And in that time, tips trickled in here and there, but they were never anything substantial.
Still, both investigators and Rosanne would follow
up on every single one. Rosanne would even fly out to wherever the tips came from and at one
point even hired private investigators to make sure every lead was investigated fully
until she could no longer afford it. As the case grew colder, detectives were well aware that
Andrea would have been getting older too.
So a new age-progressed photo was released sometime in the mid-90s,
showing what Andrea would look like as a young adult.
And that did spark a few new tips, but unfortunately, none of them helped the case.
I would say that most of the crime-server's tips that came in were suggestions.
Like, hey, you might want to check this area, or you might want to check over here.
She could be buried here, but it never really gave us any kind of a suspect name
or anything else like that. But there was a suspect name that made the radar around 1998.
A Florida Department of Law Enforcement agent named Dennis Haley approached detectives who
were looking into Andrea's case. And he had questions about a very dangerous man
who had brought up Andrea's name during an interview.
That man was Mark Rebe.
While behind bars for the murder of Donna Callahan,
a 29-year-old pregnant woman who he abducted
from a convenience store where she worked in 1989,
Rebe stunned Agent Haley when he proceeded
to confess to murdering a staggering 12 additional
women.
Only to later recant these spine-chilling admissions, clouding the case further with claims of only
confessing to protect his son.
Now, Andrea was not one of the additional 12 Rebe named.
However, this guy apparently brought up Andrea's name
out of the blue while talking to Agent Haley
about the other women, saying that he didn't have anything
to do with that missing girl.
Trying to figure out why Rebe would even mention
Andrea's case without being prompted,
Agent Haley wanted to talk to the county investigators
who have Andrea's case about a potential connection
between the two.
So that's when he approached them.
Our reporter Madison was able to track down
the now retired agent to see what he remembered
about all of this.
And while he was never actually assigned to Andrea's case,
he did his due diligence to look into the possible connection
between the young girl and this alleged serial killer.
He said that he thinks Rebe probably blurted out
Andrea's name because he had picked it up
from talking with other people.
Plus Andrea's case would have been under
the media spotlight at the time.
And although Rebe and his family had lived near Andrea
around 1990, Agent Haley thinks that Rebe was
staying with family, maybe in Orlando
at the time she went missing. So for those reasons, he concluded that Rebe was staying with family, maybe in Orlando at the time she went missing.
So for those reasons, he concluded
that Rebe likely wasn't responsible
for Andrea's disappearance.
With each passing year, Andrea's family
accepted the growing possibility
that if Andrea were to be found,
it may be her remains that are recovered.
So Roseanne gave DNA to law enforcement
in case there was ever a match with discovered remains.
But even then, they never, ever gave up hope.
They continued working to find answers,
even making TV appearances to help bring Andrea home.
But the tips generated from all this attention
didn't bring them any closer to finding Andrea.
According to a CNN article,
at least one of these shows
left Andrea's sister feeling exploited.
It was one where with a camera in tow,
producers convinced her to confront
a fast food restaurant employee,
a girl that somehow they thought
might have been her sister,
even though Asha knew in her heart
that there was no way this person was her.
Despite this bad experience,
Andrea's family still jumps at any opportunity
to draw attention to her case.
For nearly two decades,
that's all they really could do to keep moving forward.
That is until more tangible tips started coming in.
In 2019, there was a new strong development,
but that tip didn't come into Crime Stoppers or police.
It actually came right to Asha.
And that tip circled right back to Mark Rebe.
Asha received this information second hand from someone who would be very familiar with
Rebe and his family.
And this person suggested that Andrea may have known one of Rebe's sons
back in 1990, around the time that she went missing. And they're saying like she either
knew him from the local tennis center or she had even maybe been to his house to hang out,
meaning that Rebe could have been familiar with her. The problem is, no one we spoke to
could verify this tip. We asked Investigator Henderson about Rebe being a possible suspect, and she said that
he has been looked into in the past and he is still someone that they're looking at today.
And while she wasn't able to elaborate any further, she did confirm that Rebe could have
either lived nearby or traveled through the area where Andrea and her family lived when
she disappeared.
And while this is definitely a lead worth looking into,
there are a few reasons why Rebe
actually doesn't totally make sense as a suspect.
As someone who studied the man for more than two decades,
retired FDLE agent Dennis Haley still
does not think that the two are connected.
Then there's the fact that what happened with Andrea
doesn't really seem to be his MO. I mean, for one, she's much younger than his potential victims.
And while he was known to kidnap, knocking on someone's door and luring them out doesn't
necessarily fit. Retired agent Haley didn't seem to put much stock into the story about
Rebe's son knowing Andrea. But until someone can say for sure, we'll just have to sit on it.
After that, there wasn't much solid to go off of
for two more years until 2021.
And that's when a concrete tip came in
involving inmates who could have potentially
been responsible for Andrea's disappearance.
And this led detectives to finally search somewhere specific.
After getting those names and doing a little bit of research in different databases,
we law enforcement were able to identify the areas where that person had either lived or had access to.
We made contact with the current owners of the property and had consent to search several different areas. And when we started to strategize and to get that search underway,
we brought in an organization with cadaver dogs to help with that process
and ground penetrating radar to help to see for any disturbances
underneath the ground.
And then if we found one, then we would do a dig to see if we could locate
any remains or clothing that may be involved with the victim."
According to Investigator Henderson, the only solid thing that came out of one of those searches
was an extra-large plain white t-shirt, just like the one Andrea had been wearing as she
was lounging around and cleaning the same night she went missing. But to everyone's disappointment,
investigators discovered
that that specific brand and style of shirt
wasn't produced until 1998, meaning that the shirt
couldn't have been the same one Andrea was wearing
that night she disappeared.
But investigators didn't have to wait too long
for their next new lead.
Because that same year, 2021, a viable and very specific Crime Stoppers tip came in.
And that is what drove the most recent search for Andrea back in January of 2022.
The Crime Stoppers tip said you should look at this specific address for Andrea Durham.
In addition to that, it gave precise instructions as to exactly where her remains would be found
on this property.
I mean, we're talking cardinal directions and number of feet here.
So needless to say, this tip seemed promising.
The property at the time of her disappearance,
it was wooded, there was no house built on it yet.
There was some construction work going on nearby
where there was construction workers in and out,
but easily accessed and not populated by people.
So we made contact with the property owners
and they said, absolutely, you have our consent.
I remember sitting there talking to them on the porch while the cadaver dogs were out there and they did find some
disturbances, but no evidentiary value came out of it
Some of it was like trash that had been dug or had the hole had been dug and trash had been placed in
So we didn't find any
significant evidence While it turns out some of those previous jailhouse informants
were mentioned earlier only brought up Andrew's name
for some kind of sick street cred,
there are actually two men still currently incarcerated
who investigator Henderson is looking into.
I still have two people of interest
that I am strategizing to go out and talk with.
I am also constantly getting emails, phone calls from other agencies, especially in Florida,
where they have located unidentified remains, and we are comparing those remains to Andrea's
dental records to verify if that is her or not.
So we are still absolutely doing that quite often.
Investigator Henderson didn't want to name these two inmates specifically.
When asked what makes these particular two people
worth pursuing further, Henderson hinted
that the timeframe when they were out of jail
and where they lived at the time
of Andrea's disappearance line up.
Yeah, definitely could be the connection to the area
or if it's a similar MO or a victimology
of why they're in prison to begin with.
You know, if they're already charged
or incarcerated on a missing juvenile
or a juvenile they have kidnapped and then killed,
is that case, does it have similarities
to our current missing juvenile case?
When Asha has the time for social media,
she spends it updating a Facebook page
dedicated to her sister.
Andrea Durham, missing, not forgotten.
So when she logged back into her personal account after a few years, she was surprised
to see a name pop up in her inbox that she hadn't seen in a long time.
The message was from one of Andrea's childhood friends, Matt.
The two were buddies back in their old neighborhood
before the Durham sisters moved
to their new apartment complex.
Practically an expert at this point
dedicated to her sister's case,
she was shocked to learn a tidbit of information from him
that she hadn't heard before.
He said that he had spoken to her the night
that she disappeared probably about 30 minutes before
we had gotten
home because he was upset the things he was reading that they thought she had run away or
that something happened to her when she went to the store and he was like that's not the case I
was on the phone with her 30 minutes before she disappeared and he's at haunts me now that I'm
the last one that probably talked to her before she disappeared. We weren't able to get ahold of Matt's original statement, but Asha said that he did tell
her he was interviewed by police multiple times.
Matt said that the last conversation with Andrea was casual, mostly just catching up
since she had recently moved out of the neighborhood.
But he was able to recall that Andrea kept mentioning that she needed to hop off the
phone to vacuum. Now, if you haven't had a loved one go missing, this may seem like an insignificant detail.
But for Asha, being able to close just one small gap in the potential timeline gives her a clearer
picture of what may have happened that February night more than three decades ago.
Like investigator Henderson, it makes her feel like it's more likely someone lured her sister out of what was supposed to be a safe space.
Their home.
It's hard. It's hard during milestones.
When I got married or when I had my first child, I don't have any other siblings.
So it's always been me and my mom and Andrea.
I'm sure it's the same way for my mom.
You know, I had survivor's guilt for a while.
It should have been me, not her.
So that's been tough.
It's tough never stopping looking.
You have the guilt, the guilt that's always there.
At this point, I'm fairly confident
she's not with us anymore.
I feel like there was nothing in our childhood or nothing that would make her stay away this long.
Even if like my stepdad he started to live a life I don't think that's the
case anymore. There's been too much media, there's too much out there for her to
check back and see and obviously see that we've been crushed by this and I
can't see her doing that.
Married now, Asher refuses to drop the last name Durham,
yearning for that slim chance that someone, somewhere out there, wants to contact her to get a long kept secret off their chest.
It's time to come forward.
There's no reason for them not to come forward.
I mean, our family has discussed
this. We are not looking to prosecute anyone. We are not looking for justice even at this
point. My mom wants to know where her little girl is before she dies. So that's what we
want to know to make sure Andrea has been at peace. If she's been at peace all this time,
we just need to know to make sure Andrea has been at peace. If she's been at peace all this time, we just need to know.
And that's what motivates Investigator Henderson to keep moving forward on this daunting case
with so little evidence. To find this missing girl from Okaloosa County, to bring her home,
and to bring her family, even just the slightest sense of peace. After all, she was only officially handed the Durham case in December of 2022.
But she's always taken her police oath to heart,
to serve and protect.
Because a parent, all you want is to be able to take care
of your child and to keep them safe
and know where they're at and know that they're okay.
As an investigator, that's also your job, you know?
My job is to keep every citizen in Oclusa County safe.
And when you have a 13-year-old that's missing,
just completely disappeared.
You have failed her and you have failed her family.
And her family is, I'm assuming,
having to wake up every day wondering,
one, is my child alive?
Two, what did my child go through?
And three, if she's not alive, where is she?
I want to close out this episode by reading one of the notes
that Andrea's sister wrote in the local newspaper
after she first went missing.
As someone who has a little sister myself,
it really resonates with me, as I'm sure it will
with many of you.
I used to fight with Andrea.
She'd really tick me off.
We'd drive my mom crazy yelling and telling all the time.
Although once in a while, we would gossip and share
and somehow become bestest of friends.
But now she's gone.
It seems like forever.
I don't know where she is.
If only she'd come home, I'd show her how much I care.
And once again, we'd be together. At the time of her disappearance, Andrea Durham stood at five feet
three inches tall and weighed around 110 pounds. She has green eyes and dark dirty blonde hair.
She was last seen wearing a white t-shirt, faded black jeans, and white sneakers. If she were alive today, Andrea would be 47 years old.
We have an age-progress photo of her in her mid-30s up on our blog post for this episode
that you can check out.
If you know anything about the disappearance of Andrea Durham, please contact Emerald Coast
Crime Stoppers at 850-863-8477.
Or you can visit their website to submit a tip anonymously.
And don't forget to head over to the crime junkie feed
to hear more cases from the Runaway Train music video.
And don't miss Dark Down East bonus episode tomorrow.
The deck is an audio chuck production with theme music by Ryan Lewis. To learn more about The Deck and our advocacy work, visit thedeckpodcast.com.
So what do you think, Chuck?
Do you approve?
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