Wednesday, July 6, 2011

Where is Mikelle Biggs?

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Vanished in 90 seconds
by Robert A. Waters

Twelve years ago, a young girl vanished into thin air. On January 2, 1999, shortly before 6 p.m., Mikelle Biggs, 11, pedaled her bicycle to the corner of Toltec Street and El Moro Avenue. This was only four houses down from her suburban home in Mesa, Arizona. She and Kimber, her sister, thought they heard the calliope-style music from an ice cream truck so they hit their mother up for money and raced down to the corner to wait. After a few minutes, Kimber got cold and walked back home while Mikelle stayed behind. Tracy Biggs, the girls’ mother, told Kimber to go back and tell Mikelle to come home.

All Kimber found was Mikelle’s bicycle lying on the side of the road. It wasn’t on the corner but looked as if it were headed in the direction of her home. The front wheel was still spinning. Police later discovered two quarters, the exact amount given to Mikelle by her mother, in a nearby yard.

Kimber had been inside her house for all of ninety seconds before going back out to deliver her mother’s orders.

No one has seen Mikelle since.

Unlike many cases, police immediately recognized that this was likely an abduction. They quickly mobilized and began what would become the largest search in Arizona history. Cops methodically searched all the homes in the neighborhood except one (a nearby resident refused to let cops search his house, but he was later ruled out as a suspect). Investigators set up roadblocks to stop and question people who regularly drove through the neighborhood. Cops and volunteers scoured miles of nearby fields and dug through dozens of old mine shafts. Numerous suspects, including dozens of sex offenders who lived in the area, were questioned.

Hundreds of thousands of flyers were mailed out by Mikelle’s parents and the Center for Missing and Exploited Children. The case was profiled on “America’s Most Wanted.” Mother Tracy and father Darien Biggs appeared on several national television shows to plead for their daughter’s return.

Investigators followed up on 10,000 leads, but never came up with a viable suspect. They learned that there was no ice cream truck in the area that day. Although the children had thought they heard the distinctive music from the good humor man, they were mistaken.

Mikelle was an honor student who loved art and playing the clarinet. An article in the Arizona Republic described her as “outgoing and creative. A bright little girl who wants to be a Disney animator, Mikelle was wearing a short-sleeved red ‘Lindbergh’ T-shirt. She also wore bell-bottom blue jeans. Mikelle was an honor-roll student at nearby Lindbergh Elementary School.”

What happened to Mikelle?

The kidnapping was obviously a crime of opportunity, and one in which the abductor got lucky. On the street of a suburban neighborhood, it would have been almost impossible to commit such an act without being seen. Yet it did happen.

Either Mikelle was taken by a neighbor or someone driving by. Knowing this, police spent hours searching nearby residences. No clues were found.

One suspect was Dee Blalock. A sex offender in three states, he lived two blocks from where Mikelle was kidnapped. But his wife gave him an alibi, telling investigators that Blalock had been in their garage all night. His name came up again two years later when he broke into a neighbor’s home and beat her nearly to death as he raped her. He was convicted of that offense and given 187 years in prison.

Tracy and Darien still consider Blalock the best suspect so far. They even visited him in prison and asked him if he abducted Mikelle. Blalock denied it, but it didn’t convince the couple.

Blalock (or someone else) could have been driving through the neighborhood and seen Mikelle standing alone or riding her bicycle. Impulsively, he could have stopped and snatched her, then driven home and hid the girl until heat died down.

Whatever happened, the disappearance of Mikelle Biggs has stumped investigators for more than a decade.

14 comments:

Az_t said...

This is so incredibly sad. I still can't believe after all these years that she hasn't been found. :'( I remember when I first heard this on the news back when I still lived in Mesa. My heart goes out to the family and her friends.

Unknown said...

to miklle and her family sweet sweet dreams i hope u find her one day everone is looking for her still me and my mom are trying to find her we mite know were she at we have to look there but if we frind her we well call the cops asp hope u all good luck

Unknown said...

So sad and scary.

Julia said...

can they check the videos from the night of her disappearance and see if there was a campfire of any sort around the location of the pedophile's Dee Blalock house

Unknown said...

I still think of her, though I never knew her it broke my heart when I heard about it and still breaks my heart. As a moyher and now grandmother it also scares me to death. I pray she will be found someday.

Dema said...

I have never forgotten Mikelle for all of these years since I first heard of her disappearance. I had a vision back then of what happened to her, but since I live across the country I have never been there to see if I could check it out. Since then I've lost a son to murder, so my heart really goes out to her family.

Unknown said...

I was very sad when I hears this story, and can't even begin to imagine how people can be so evil, and look like everyone else. Its so scary, I had lost a niece to crib death and later found it was kidney failure. Her name was Kaitlin, she was 2 months and 17 days old, I was so scared when I had my daughter in 2010 almost 3 years after my niece's death I couldn't leave my daughter's side. It's only because the image that stuck in my mind of Kaitlin and the hospital had us hold her after she passed to say our goodbyes I still get nightmares. But it has helped me to keep my children safe and an eye I keep on them always. Its because of my son I adopted that has inspired me to help other children and so I am in my last year of college going for my bachelor's in child psychology. My daughter has inspired me also because her imagination helps me to express more in my sketches. I guess I'm trying to say is I can't imagine why such a thing happens I'm 29 and been married 11 years now still trying to figure out why horrible things happen? I am still learning about life, and I will pray for you, and I saw this page and just had to write. It saddens me, and angers me.

Unknown said...

This is really frightening. I don't know these people, but my heart goes out to them. I never had children of my own, but if I did, I don't know if I would ever be the same until I got some kind of news about her. There are too many creeps running loose in these streets, yet they've gotten so bold, they attempt to snatch them off the street in broad daylight, on their way to school, or even when they are with their parent (s). I hope they find this girl, Mikelle. This is so sad & so wrong on so many levels!

tessa d said...

i feel that sex offenders should go live on skid row and not go back into society. it's terrible that they live among our children. why isn't anyone looking out for kids safety. i'm sorry but a sex offender doesn't get reborn

tessa d said...

sex offenders should never be allowed to go back into communities - we must keep our children safe. let the offenders go live on skid row

Unknown said...

I totally agree.

Little said...

Yeah very sad:'( why little girls nobody deserves that.God bless them,rip.

Matty Matt said...

Did her sister ever undergo hypnosis? There have been cases in which it has helped the investigation - i.e., Person, vehicle. So sad. I truly think Blalock did it. He lived close, had a record of assault on children, had a shaky alibi. He was probably watching the sisters and when one girl walked away, he pounced.

Unknown said...

It would be interesting to know if there were any out of the ordinary events that took p lace before and after the kidnapping such as has been mentioned to wait "till the heat is off", whether or not people that had stayed in the area "suddenly decided for a need for change" and left ,or talked loosely that they were going to a certain place , out of the county / state