Cherice Maria Ragins was 24 years old when she vanished from Catonsville, Maryland, after last being seen on February 21, 2010. NamUs lists her as missing from the area of Route 40 and Rolling Road in Catonsville, and identifies the Baltimore County Police Department as the investigating agency. She was described as a Black woman, about 5 feet 4 inches to 5 feet 5 inches tall and about 120 pounds, with black collar-length hair and brown eyes. She had a tattoo of her first name, “Cherice,” on her neck or throat. When she was last seen, she was reported to be wearing gray sweatpants, a red hoodie, a black jacket with fur around the hood, a black shirt, and pink-and-green shoes, and she was carrying a black purse trimmed in silver.
In the days before she was reported missing, Cherice had gone from her Baltimore-area home to spend time with her boyfriend, Travis Eugene Elleby.
Court records later described her as living with her mother, Clariese Ragins, and said the two were very close and spoke every day. Cherice did not have a car, bank account, credit cards, or a mobile phone, details that became important because there was no later sign of ordinary life activity after she disappeared. Her mother became alarmed when Cherice did not come home or make contact; WMAR later reported that Clariese said Cherice always called when she stayed away for a weekend, and that silence from both Cherice and Elleby felt deeply out of character. She reported Cherice missing to Baltimore County Police after receiving no word from her.
Elleby initially told police that he and Cherice had walked to a bus stop near Route 40 and Rolling Road and that she was heading back to her mother’s home. In later accounts summarized by Maryland court records, he claimed Cherice used a pay phone, called a man named Marcus, and then left in a red Chevy Tahoe. Investigators found serious problems with that story: surveillance from the area did not show Cherice, Elleby, or the described vehicle, and police found no record of the pay-phone call that Elleby claimed Cherice made. The man identified as Marcus told investigators he was at work and said Cherice did not have his mobile number and would not have recognized his truck. The court record shows that police came to view Elleby’s shifting account as false and as an attempt to direct suspicion elsewhere.
For years, Cherice’s family was left without the person they loved and without the answer they most needed: where she was. The Charley Project describes her disappearance as endangered missing and notes that she was never heard from again. A later Maryland appellate opinion recorded that searches for her found no passport history, airline activity, vehicle records, or credit-history activity over the years after she vanished, apart from one joint car loan that had been paid in full. Those findings reinforced what her family had known from the beginning: Cherice’s silence did not fit who she was. She had been close to her mother, had not taken enough clothing for a long absence, and had no known pattern of disappearing from her life.
In September 2016, more than six years after Cherice vanished, Travis Eugene Elleby was indicted in connection with her death. Patch reported that Baltimore County Police said investigators determined Elleby had murdered Cherice and disposed of her body, though her body had not been found. In November 2017, after a bench trial, he was convicted of second-degree murder. WMAR reported that phone records showed he and Cherice had been fighting and that he had said he wanted to kill her; the Maryland court opinion described their relationship as intense and volatile, citing hundreds of phone calls in less than two months, arguments involving jealousy, and the judge’s finding that Elleby repeatedly lied about the events surrounding Cherice’s disappearance. In February 2018, he was sentenced to 30 years of incarceration, with all but 25 years suspended, followed by five years of supervised probation.
Cherice Ragins’ case is a painful story of a young woman whose everyday ties to home, family, and routine were suddenly broken. She was last known in the Catonsville area, near Route 40 and Rolling Road, after spending time with a boyfriend whose account of her final known movements later collapsed under investigation. Her mother’s concern began with silence that did not match Cherice’s character, and the years that followed brought a measure of legal accountability but not the full closure of locating Cherice herself. The case stands as both a missing person case and a homicide prosecution: Cherice was a 24-year-old daughter, loved and missed, whose disappearance led investigators from an urgent search to a murder conviction, while her family was left carrying the unanswered question of where she was taken.Last Seen: Feb 21, 2010
