Ashley Flowers

They're hunting for the vehicle she was in, a 1990 black and gray GMC Jimmy.

The thinking was, find the car, find Nikki, or at least be one step closer to where she is.

But week after week, the sky, the ground, it all offered nothing.

And it turns out that's because the car wasn't in Indiana.

You see, Richmond, Indiana, you know this, is right on the eastern border of the state bumping against Ohio.

So it's not uncommon for people who live in Richmond to work in Dayton, Ohio, because that's the closest big city.

Nikki is one of those people.

She worked at a prison there, even lived in Dayton before.

Yes, but jurisdictional lines are pretty solid.

And so since every indication pointed to Nikki going missing from the laundromat in Indiana, no one was really paying much attention to Ohio.

I mean, they could go like talk to people in Ohio who knew her and stuff.

And I think they did what they could, like getting a hold of her ex, her co-workers, her friends.

But the focus was definitely not on Dayton.

Right.

So this big clue got missed for months, from July 22nd all the way to November 3rd, 2001.

That is when someone just happened to stumble upon this vital clue that had just been sitting there, casually, as if it had been waiting to be found all along.

The GMC was parked at the Meadows of Catalpa Apartments, roughly 45 minutes from Richmond.

Now, the reason the vehicle gets spotted is that one of the doors was left open, which catches the eye of a Montgomery County sheriff's deputy.

He eventually runs the plates and sees that the car was flagged for a missing persons case.

So when Richmond PD gets notified and gets out there, they know that the door lock was damaged, the ignition had been tampered with, and the stereo was missing.