A woman hasn't been in contact with her family for 37 years and now they're hoping to find out what happened to her.
Cassandra Durham's father, Michael, tells Inside Edition Digital he last saw her at their home in Baltimore , Maryland, in August 1987.
“Well, when she was 19, she left here with her boyfriend on a trip to Michigan, Roscommon, Michigan. And I never heard from her after that, except one time she called me like three days later and said she was in trouble,” he says. “I didn't know exactly, but when she left, she was working in a yogurt place and she had taken the deposits for two days and left town. So I was assuming it had something to do with the money.”
Investigators say Cassandra sent her family letters after she left saying she regrets taking the money from her employer. She even sent back some of the money she had taken.
Detective Sgt. Brett Nichols with the Michigan State Police tells Inside Edition Digital, “Mr. Durham tried to call Cassandra and did not get an answer. [Her parents] went straight to Cassandra's apartment where she was last known to be living. And when they got there, they went in and they found that it had been pretty much emptied out. They found a couple of boxes, some personal paperwork, and they found a letter that she had written to her dad.”
She wrote in one: "Dear Dad, I don't know what to say or where to begin…I don't really have an explanation for what I did, I just did it…Of course, I'll be home when things are cleared and I get myself straightened out."
Michael Durham says Cassandra's potential trouble with the law was a big reason the family didn't go looking for her sooner.
“I didn't report her missing because she left her own volition. And two, I assume the police at least wanted to talk to her, but I had some friends who were in the police department, they said it's not a missing person when somebody almost 20 years old drives away with their boyfriend. So I assumed from that time that we would hear from her,” he admits.
The last official known correspondence was Sept. 1, 1987, according to Nichols.
“Mr. Durham received a phone call from Cassie. She had told him that she was in Roscommon, Michigan with her boyfriend Eric. That they were visiting Eric's grandparents and that she was okay and doing okay but didn't want anybody to look for her and asked that that Mr. Durham not try to find her,” he says.
“Basically giving him the idea that she's still wanting to try to stay away. And that she also mentioned that she didn't want anybody to be mad at Eric. Mr. Durham told me at one time that he did try to call that phone number back, which is from a 517 area code. At the time in 1987 that would've been consistent with the Roscommon area. Mr. Durham did try to call that number back, but he never got an answer whenever he tried to call her.”
Years later, Mr. Durham got a strange message on his telephone answering machine that he believes was his daughter.
“Strangely sometime over the next couple of years, Mr. Durham found a message on his answering machine that was basically, it's just an old Phil Collins song called, ‘Separate Lives,’ and a segment of that song was playing on his answering machine. He had caller ID and he called that number back and it came back to a pizza joint in Harrisville, Pennsylvania,” Nichols says. “Mr. Durham, believing that that was probably Cassie calling and kind of sending a message through music, drove up to Harrisville, Pennsylvania, went to that pizza joint, talked to the people at the pizza joint, and they didn't really have any information that helped. The phone that they have there is a public phone and a lot of people use it. And of course they had no cameras and nobody remembered ever seeing Cassie in there.”
As time went on, Cassandra Durham’s disappearance was never brought to the attention of authorities until 2019. Nichols says that a friend of Michael Durham’s saw on the news that a Jane Doe fitting the description of Cassandra was found in Michigan .
Michael Durham contacted authorities in that state and explained to them the situation.
The concerned father submitted a DNA test and it did not match that Jane Doe. It was only then that an official missing person report was filed.
Michael Durham hopes after all this time, his daughter is alright and he would like nothing more than to just hear her say she is well.
“Well, I would be satisfied to think that she's okay, that she's made her own choice not to be involved with me or her brothers or mother or anybody else in our family. And if that's her choice, I don't know what I can do about it, except be disappointed,” Michael says.
Nichols says that he currently has no suspects in the case and everyone, including Cassandra’s former boyfriend who she went away with, is just a witness.
Authorities hope that getting Cassandra Dunham’s story out into the world will bring a new piece of information, evidence or potentially Cassandra herself.
Cassandra Durham would be in her mid-50's today and could possibly be in Michigan, Ohio , Pennsylvania or Maryland.
If you have any information on her whereabouts you're asked to contact Detective Sgt. Brett Nichols at Michigan State Police at (989) 422-5103 or via email at NicholsB2@michigan.gov.
You can also contact the FBI ViCAP unit at (800) 634-4097 or via email at vicap@fbi.gov.
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