A family fire in Algiers, New Orleans on March 6, 1984 left two children dead and one child, three-year-old Ramona Brown, unaccounted for. Ramona’s remains were never found in the debris, and fire experts later questioned whether a blaze controlled within 30 to 40 minutes could have completely consumed a small child’s remains. A third set of remains recovered after the fire was ultimately identified as an animal, not Ramona.

Ramona’s six-year-old sister at the time, Simona, has long maintained that she and Ramona escaped the house together and that a bronze or brown older-model Cadillac stopped beside them. Simona described an older Black man with short hair and an older white woman with long hair, both thin, who offered to look after Ramona; according to Simona, Ramona then went into the car and was never seen again. That account was not reported to investigators at the time, and a formal missing persons report was not filed until 2018, when a cold case investigation was opened.

The family rebuilt their home on the same lot and has pursued age-progressed images and DNA searches through ancestry databases. No confirmed trace of Ramona has been found; anyone with information about the March 6, 1984 fire or the described vehicle and people is asked to come forward.