Shemika Cosey was 16 when she vanished from her aunt’s home in Berkeley, Missouri, in the early morning hours of a day in late December 2008. The night before she disappeared she’d been at a sleepover, last seen on the couch about 1:30 a.m.; by morning she was gone. The front door was unlocked and her coat and purse were missing, while her overnight bag and other clothes remained. She did not have a cell phone at the time and was last seen wearing a tan Old Navy coat, a black long-sleeve shirt, and blue jeans.

Police initially treated the case as a runaway, a classification her mother, Paula Hill, has contested, and that early assessment delayed a large-scale search. Hill later found notebooks in which Shemika wrote about a boyfriend and a possible pregnancy months before she disappeared; police interviewed the boyfriend but reportedly gained no useful information. A 2026 tip prompted a backyard search that yielded bone fragments, but a forensic pathologist determined they were animal remains. The investigation remains open and the family continues to push for answers.

If anyone knew Shemika, her circle, or where she might have gone that night, can you share what you remember?