DETROIT – When 14-year-old Carla Tucker walked to a convenience store near her Detroit home her family didn’t know it would be the last time they would see her. That was 43 years ago.
“I was looking out the window from where we lived and I watched my sister go into a corner store where I could visibly see her. She came out of the store, she made a left turn and started walking -- and she was out of sight and we never saw her again,” her brother, Horace Tucker, said in 2015.
Recommended Videos
The last time her family saw Carla Tucker alive was on June 19, 1979. Her remains were discovered 12 years later, but the family wouldn’t know that for another 23 years. They still don’t have closure.
'You never stop searching, you never move past this'
“You never stop searching, you never move past this, you learn ways to just survive and that’s just what we did. But we wanna live. If you heard of anything, anyone, back then, any stories, you believe were urban legends. If you see it now and you recall how we looked then and remember seeing her in school or high school or stories please don’t be afraid to call Crime Stoppers,” Carla Tucker’s sister, Stephanie Tucker-Lwanga, said in 2015.
Carla Tucker (Crime Stoppers)
Carla Tucker’s body was discovered in the Matlin Road Landfill in a 55-gallon drum that had been encased in concrete. She had been sexually assaulted and strangled. The landfill is located about 30 miles from where Carla Tucker was last seen.
Known only as “Jane Doe,” her remains went unidentified for 23 years.
In August of 2014, her mother and sister submitted DNA after seeing a newscast about unclaimed bodies.
On Feb. 11, 2015, the DNA results came through and Carla Tucker finally regained her name 35 years after she vanished.
“This has been a long, painful, painful journey and I just wanna say that the person’s or the people that killed my daughter - you not only killed my daughter, but you killed my family,” her mother Laverne Wilson said in 2015.
- June 19, 1979: Carla Tucker, 14, walks to convenience store. Her brother sees her exit the store, take a left and she vanishes.
- Feb. 11, 1992: A body is discovered in a 55-gallon drum encased in concrete in the Matlin Road Landfill, 30 miles away from where Carla Tucker was last seen. The body is unidentified.
- August 2014: Carla Tucker’s mother and sister submit DNA after seeing a newscast about unclaimed bodies.
- Feb. 11, 2015: Carla Tucker’s remains are identified.
Read: More Michigan cold case coverage
Why is ClickOnDetroit covering so many cold cases?
We’re working to bring attention to as many unsolved and missing persons cases from around the state as we can. Our hope is that getting this important information out to the public will help generate tips for investigators and potentially lead to closure for the affected families. If you have a cold case you’d like us to look into, please let us know by using the form below.