Shaquita Yolanda Bell was 23 when she disappeared from Alexandria, Virginia, on a summer day in 1996. She was last seen leaving her grandmother’s home at about 1:00 p.m. on June 27, departing with her estranged boyfriend, Michael Eric Dickerson. Bell called around 2:00 p.m. saying she would be returning home soon, but she never came back. A mother of three who worked as a clerk in a Giant Food bakery, friends and family described her as responsible and unlikely to abandon her children.

In the weeks before she vanished Bell reported domestic violence by Dickerson, including an assault that led to his arrest a month earlier, and said he had threatened her with a loaded gun. She had moved in with her grandmother and kept a diary documenting the abuse. A friend of Dickerson’s, Jonathan Jody Shields, later told police that Dickerson confessed to killing Bell and that he helped bury her in a wooded area in Fort Washington, Maryland; Shields was murdered in 1999 the day before he was to wear a wire.

Does anyone have information about Bell’s last day, movements after that 2:00 p.m. call, or knowledge of the Fort Washington area where she was reportedly buried?