You've heard plenty about Gabby Petito, as her heartbreaking case was followed nationwide. But what about women who've been missing for years, like Latonya Roberts?
www.wesh.com
This Orlando woman vanished 3 decades ago — her family still doesn't have answers
You've heard plenty about Gabby Petito, as her heartbreaking case was followed nationwide. But what about women who've been missing for years, like LaTonya Roberts?
The Orlando woman vanished nearly three decades ago, and her family still has no answers.
"I wouldn't wish this on my worst enemy to have a family member and you have no idea where they are," Lolita Rowe said about her sister.
Lolita Rowe's sister, LaTonya Roberts, has been missing for 27 years.
Have you heard of her?
The then-22-year-old Orlando woman was last seen on Dec. 16, 1994, at Oakridge High School.
“The last time I saw my sister was at my high school basketball game. Oakridge had a game on a Friday night and I had to sing the national anthem and she came out to support me. She videotaped me singing and after that, she came up and gave me a hug and we talked and everything and she stayed for a few moments and after that, she got a page from her boyfriend. She went out to the payphone that was set up outside the school to call him and then she came back to inform me that she was going over to his house and she said she would call me later," Rowe told WESH's Gail Paschall-Brown.
Latonya later paged Lolita.
Once on the phone, they talked about going to Eatonville.
"She said, 'Do you want to go and hang out with me at Hero's?' And when she said that, the boyfriend was in the background and he asked her in like a violent way, 'Who are you talking to,' and she was like 'this is my sister,'" Lolita Rowe said.
That was the last time she heard from LaTonya.
WESH spoke with her parents during that time.
It was LaTonya's father who found her car, a white 1988 Toyota Corolla abandoned outside of what was then called Club Hero's. It had a flat tire. Her sister says LaToya is 4-11, so she always sat on a cushion and pushed her seat all the way up to the steering wheel. But when they checked out the vehicle, the cushion was in the back seat.
"And the driver's seat was pulled all the way back so that gave an indication to us our sister did not drive that car up there," Lolita Rowe said.
The family told detectives about the alleged emotional and physical abuse Roberts suffered at the hands of her boyfriend, information she kept in a planner and diary, and calendar given to investigators.
LaTonya Roberts was listed as endangered and missing after detectives received reports that the boyfriend took Roberts to a Polk County Citrus Grove a month before she went missing.
"Like dug a hole and put a gun to her head and told that her he would kill her and nobody would find her," Rowe added.
"There was a threat made against her life and then after, after a period of time she ended up missing," Sgt. Ben Thorpe said.
Thorpe manages the domestic violence and missing persons unit for the Orange County Sheriff's Department.
The boyfriend was a person of interest identified early on by the original detectives who investigated this case. But there was not enough evidence, to charge him with Roberts' disappearance.
Her sister says the family pleaded for help, made themselves available to detectives, the media and offered a $10,000 reward for information leading to Roberts' whereabouts.
LaTonya Roberts' story was printed in the Crusader in 1995, a national publication, but the word of her disappearance never went national.
"I don't believe that black and brown colored men and women cases are treated the same as Caucasians. We don't get the same publicity," Rowe said.
Today Twitter users refer to it as the "Missing White Woman" syndrome after coverage of 22-year old Gabby Petito blew up in the media.
"I can see how people may perceive that. I can tell you definitely for myself and for the people that work for me. I have an incredibly diverse squad," Thorpe said.
Thorpe and six others handle all the domestic violence, missing persons and child abuse cases for the entire county.
"We dig into it and treat each case you know with the utmost importance so as far as myself and the sheriff's office and my squad that phenomenon I can tell you hands down does not exist for us," Thorpe added.
Roberts' birthday was last month. She's 49 years old.
Thorpe said, "she is not forgotten.”
"What if you were in our shoes, and if it was someone that you loved dearly, you would want someone to come forth if they had any information," Rowe said.
If you have any information about this case, call Crimeline at 1-800-423-tips
