Family of missing duo keeps search alive
Posted: November 07, 2005
Middle Tennessee is home to some prominent missing persons cases. Tabitha Tuders, Teresa Peden, and Jennifer Wix are just a few of those who have disappeared. For the families, sadness often turns to anger and frustration when their case grows cold. But one family is determined to keep their investigation fresh in the minds of everyone.
Jennifer Wix and her little girl, Adrianna, haven't been seen in nearly 20 months now. The family is frustrated, and say investigators aren't working hard enough. And they wonder why police have never searched the farm of Jennifer Wix's boyfriend, where Jennifer and her daughter were last seen alive.
"Nobody knows what we're going through, until you walk in our shoes," said Jennifer's grandmother Peggy Calvert.
Calvert has been down a road in Springfield a hundred times; single-handedly going door-to-door, pounding the pavement for leads on her missing loved ones. 21-year-old Jennifer disappeared in March, 2004. Three-year-old Adrianna also vanished without a trace.
"I think that my daughter and granddaughter are in heaven with their Father," said Jennifer's mother Kathy Holloway.
"I truly believe that the girls are dead, and that we haven't had a thorough investigation to find out the real truth," said Calvert.
They can't undo the past. But the family is determined to change the future.
"We do need some new laws," said Holloway.
Holloway said that police should be allowed to execute search warrants more quickly in an investigation. Waiting for a blood trail, she said, is too late.
"I would like to see that the last place a person went missing from is a crime scene and is treated as such," said Holloway, "And that immediately that place is searched and the police have access to it thereafter."
The Wixes' case seems to have turned cold, though police refute that. That's why the family is refreshing their campaign.
"As time goes by, the fliers weather and get taken down for whatever reason," said Calvert. "We want the public to know that they are still missing and we still don't know what happened to them."
There is no shortage of willingness to help, and Jennifer Wix has become a household name. The family plans to keep it that way until something develops.
"We are not going to back up," said Jennifer's aunt Lisa Robertson. "We're not going to back down. And we're not going away until somebody finds out what happened to them and finds them and brings them back to us, dead or alive."
News 2 spoke with Lt. Don Bennett of the Robertson County Sheriff's Department on Sunday afternoon. He insists the Jennifer Wix case is still active, and investigators are following up leads every week. The families of Tabitha Tuders and Teresa Peden - another high profile, Robertson County case - were invited to speak to News 2 on Sunday, but were unavailable.
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