39 years after KC woman went missing, police identify her remains. But who killed her?
Deoina Mitchell has spent her entire life trying find out what happened to her mother who disappeared when Mitchell was just two-years old.
In an effort to get answers, Mitchell walked into the Kansas City Police Department’s South Patrol Division this summer and filed a missing report for her mom, Gwendolyn Robinson, who has been missing since 1983.
Kansas City police, along with Mitchell and members of the Clay County sheriff’s and prosecutor’s offices, held a news conference Thursday at police headquarters in downtown Kansas City to announce what detectives were able to find out after reopening the nearly 40-year old cold case.
“They have solved the cold case of a missing 19-year-old woman,” said Officer Donna Drake, a spokeswoman for Kansas City police. “But now we are looking for the public’s help on another cold case.”
The new mystery: Who killed her?
Mitchell said finally knowing what happened to her mother feels good because she doesn’t have to wonder anymore. She has spent the years hoping and praying her mother would return one day.
“I spent my entire life looking for my mother wondering where was she at and what happened to her,” Mitchell said. “I assumed the people in her life did everything possible to locate her.”
But no one cared enough to do what should have been done, Mitchell said.
“It is never too late to do what needs to be done,” she said. “If anyone has any information, please come forward.”
The details of how police were able to solve the cold case is an “astounding story” that goes back nearly 40 years, Drake said.
Missing person’s investigation goes cold
Robinson was initially reported missing in 1983, Drake said.
Police followed up on leads until they were all exhausted. Eventually, with no new information, the case went cold, Drake said.
When Robinson filed the missing person’s report on her mother this summer, that led investigators to reopen it.
“Investigators worked for hours pouring over details on the cold case and working with Miss Mitchell to find answers,” Drake said.
Detective Nathan Kinate worked the case, which dated back to before he was born. He interviewed family and friends, but there was little information about Robinson’s whereabouts.
Kinate requested the help of Darin Lee, a Kansas City police intelligence analyst. One day, Mitchell provided a photo of her mother, which Lee thought matched a composite he had seen in 2017 of a murder victim in a case being worked by the Clay County Sheriff’s Office, police said.
That turned out to be the missing piece of the puzzle.
“With the help of our crime lab, DNA in this case has led to a cold case homicide of a Jane Doe in Clay County from 1985,” Drake said.
Remains found in Clay County
On April 18, 1985, Clay County Sheriff deputies responded to a rural area east off Missouri City just off of Missouri 210 highway to investigate human remains that had been found.
“There was not a lot of preliminary information to go on at the time,” said Sgt. Chris Johnson, supervisor of the criminal investigations unit for the Clay County Sheriff’s Office.
Deputies took an initial report and began an investigation that stretched into the early 1990s. At that point, the case went inactive for some time, he said.
In 2005, the sheriff’s cold case unit reactivated the case and detectives generated about 350 investigative leads and reports that led them to different parts of the country.
“The remains were thought to have been from missing people from Chicago, to Florida, to Missouri, to being tied into serial murders out of Overland Park, Kansas,” Johnson said.
At one point, investigators thought the remains belonged to an white woman between the ages of 18 and 22.
“With further testing, we realized that they belonged to a 17 to 23-year-old black female,” Johnson said.
It wasn’t until August, when Kinate contacted the sheriff’s office, that they were able to positively identify the remains as Robinson.
“We’re going to continue this investigation — we always have, we always going to — until we can bring closure for Miss Mitchell, for Miss Robinson, as well as the rest of her family,” he said.
Now that investigators have identified the victim, they expect to have new leads to follow up. Investigators will be combining the missing person’s case file with the homicide case file to see what has been done and what else needs to be done, including interviewing possible witnesses.
Zach Thompson, assistant Clay County prosecutor, commended the hard work of the Kansas City Police Department and Clay County Sheriff’s Office, saying without it, Robinson’s disappearance would still be unsolved..
“This is a story about a young woman who decided to embark on a journey to find the truth about her mother and who would not quit until she did find that truth,” Thompson said. “Now we are asking the public’s help to further her journey in finding justice and truth for her mother.”
