By Donna Hales
Phoenix Staff Writer
March 18, 2009 12:39 am
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Jamie McChurin went missing 12 years ago today at the age of 16. Her family wants closure, and they hope and pray someone will tell what they know about her disappearance.
Command Sgt. Maj. Bryan Farmer of the Special Investigations Unit of the Muskogee Police Department said he gets leads from time to time — but none have led to what happened to her.
McChurin had just completed her shift at Tastee Freez and took a cab to a friend’s house the night she disappeared. A little while later she was believed to have entered a large, dark-colored, four-door sedan.
Farmer and her mother, Vickie Williams, who now lives in another state, believes she got into the car.
“We thought we knew whose car it was — he said he didn’t do it,” Williams said.
McChurin has a daughter, now 13, her parents are caring for. Williams said her daughter loved her baby, who was 16 months old at the time of her disappearance. She had no reason to willingly leave home.
“It is sad,” the mother said. “She (granddaughter) still talks about her momma — why her momma would leave her. I tell her, ‘Your momma didn’t leave you.’”
Farmer said Williams contacts Farmer at least four or five times a year.
“I talk to Bryan all the time,” Williams said Tuesday. “There’s just not been anything. I was there when dogs were taken out to Summit (to search a pond),” she said. “Somebody knows something — you don’t just disappear. But nobody’s talking — nobody will tell anything.”
A pond at Taft also was searched on a tip as to the whereabouts of McChurin.
“Just let there be closure — that’s all I ask. Not knowing — you look at it (anniversary) and you have hope. This year, I don’t know. Ten to 12 years is really getting to be a hard undertaking.”
Williams’ faith is helping her.
“The only way you get through this — I had to turn it over to God,” she said. “He’s going to have to take care of it. He will give me an answer one day.”
You can help
If you know what happened to Jamie McChurin in 1997, her mother, Vickie Williams, requests you call Command Sgt. Maj. Bryan Farmer at 680-3114.
McChurin was 5-feet, 1-inch tall when she disappeared and weighed 133 pounds. She has brown hair and brown eyes. There is a scar over her right eye and she has numerous tattoos.
Police investigators say they do not believe she would have willingly disappeared on her own.
Reach Donna Hales at 918-684-2923 or Click Here to Send Email
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Photos
McChurin