In Cedar Springs, Michigan, 11-month-old Shannon Dale Verhage was last seen on June 3, 1997, when she left her grandparents’ home with her 19-year-old mother, Rachel Timmerman. Rachel told her father she was going on a date and had been asked to bring the baby. Shannon was described as about two feet six inches tall, roughly 30 pounds, with blond hair, blue eyes, cheek and chin dimples, and a birthmark on the back of her neck; she was last seen wearing a tricolored dress and a diaper.

Rachel had reported being raped in August 1996 by Marvin Charles Gabrion and was preparing to testify; her preliminary hearing was scheduled for June 5, 1997—two days after they disappeared. In the weeks after their disappearance, letters arrived suggesting Rachel had left voluntarily, but investigators later concluded the messages were intended to make the disappearance look voluntary. Rachel’s body was recovered from Oxford Lake on July 5, 1997; she had been bound, weighted with concrete, and drowned. No confirmed trace of Shannon has ever been found and her fate remains unknown.

Does anyone have information about Shannon’s last known movements or the person identified in the letters as Delbert?