HERNANDO COUNTY, Fla — Carrie Leonard's signature smile still lives on in family photos. Snapshots of a young woman celebrating holidays, birthday parties, and family vacations.
But the last pictures Rosetta Yeager has of her younger sister show Carrie at 21 years old. She says she disappeared from the family house in 1997.
For the next two years, the family waited for any kind of news. Rosetta even packed up her life and moved into the family home in Hernando County to be with her mom.
In that time period, she says she still had hope that her sister would turn up alive, but in 1999 a detective showed up to their house to give them the news that her body had been found.
"The detective came to the house, and I had this gut feeling, ya know? I just had this gut feeling, just the look on his face. He said, 'well there's a couple boys that were hunting, running after a rabbit, and they found remains that we believe were your sister's.' And it was like shock," Rosetta said.
She says her mom never recovered from the news.
"She wanted answers, and she never got them before she passed away," she told 10News. "On her deathbed, she made me promise I would never give up on my sister's case. And I never will, I mean, she's my sister. You don't give up on that."
The Hernando County Sheriff's Office lists Carrie's case under "unsolved homicides" and Rosetta says detectives believe someone killed her sister. She wants to know who.
"I will never forget what they did, and how they've made everybody feel, and made me feel, and for taking my sister's life," Rosetta said. "I mean, it's not fair. What did she do? I want to know what she do for you to take her life? What did she do that was so horrible?"
Decades later, Rosetta doesn't know if she'll ever get resolution, but she knows the Hernando County Sheriff's Office detectives are hard at work. She says some of them are "like family."
She has renewed hope every time she hears about a cold case solved by new DNA technology.
"I always think about my sister, it's like, one day, this is gonna be on here that this is gonna be solved. Hopefully, it will be DNA, because it has come so far," she said.
Hernando County cold-case detective George Loydgren has already solved other cases using new DNA technology. Earlier this year, the sheriff's office announced they had a suspect in the 1983 sexual battery of 12-year-old girl.
Loydgren says not only is the science getting better, but their chances of tracking down the people committing crimes are too, because more people are sharing their DNA…
"Now you have these private companies like 23 and me," he said.
You're not gonna have the bad guys putting their DNA in, but family members are putting it in. And it's more than DNA."
The cold case unit is using companies like "Facelogics" to help them recreate what people would look like. When a body is found, detectives send the company information from their investigation, the autopsy report, and medical examiner's findings.
They put all of that together, and the recreation is the artists' rendition. Loydgren says with the recreation, detectives have a better shot of identifying who they are.
He hopes all of these tools can help bring closure to the families of people who have gone so long without answers.
Family members like Rosetta, who continues to keep her promise to her mom 23 years later, and never gives up.
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