#keeshae jacobs

The World of the Missing: Why Don’t We Matter?

This is Daniel Robinson who went missing after leaving a work site in the desert in his Jeep Renegade on June 23. His father David Robinson has been looking for his son and has lost hope in the police. When we (People of Color) go missing we are not even a byline in the newspapers let alone a key story for the major news outlets. Why do People of Color not matter to you? As a mother twin 11 year…

21 year old Keeshae Jacobs disappeared in Richmond, Virginia on September 26th, 2016. Keeshae was last seen near Chimborazo Park, where she texted her mother Toni Jacobs and told her that she was spending the night with a friend and would return home the next morning. However, Keeshae never returned home and Toni reported her missing the following afternoon. Although Keeshae is an adult, her family said it was uncharacteristic for her to stay out of touch for long periods of time. Their concerns only intensified as days and weeks passed and Keeshae remained missing without any activity on her cell phone, bank card, email or Facebook account.

Almost two months later, in November 2016, police arrested 23 year old Randy Watkins on child abuse charges. About a week later, it was revealed that Keeshae was seen with Randy hours before her disappearance on September 26th. Police have yet to reveal whether or not they believe Randy is involved in Keeshae’s disappearance, and at the time the story was reported, police claimed that they were just simply noting the connection between the missing woman and the man being charged in an unrelated case. At this time, police also stated that they did not have any evidence of foul play in Keeshae’s case. In January 2017, Keeshae’s older brother Deveon Jacobs was murdered. Police arrested a suspect shortly after and announced that the murder was unrelated to Keeshae’s disappearance. Other than her brother’s tragic death, police did not have any other updates on Keeshae’s case at that time and stuck to their earlier statements that they had no evidence of foul play.

Another difficult part is pranksters not taking her daughter’s case seriously. She says, After the rally, I was getting a lot of crank calls. People were sending fake messages on Facebook. One person called and said, ‘Ma, ma.’ I asked ‘Who is this?’ And they’d say, ‘Your daughter’ and then they would hang up. People were saying she was abducted by Muslims, photoshopping her face on Muslim women’s pictures and posting them on Facebook. People have lied to store owners, saying that Keeshae has been found and asking them to take her pictures down. Toni has since stopped accepting many friend requests and notifies police about every prank phone call and Facebook post.

As the national conversation about missing black girls picks up, Toni expresses her frustrations with assumptions made about them and overall media coverage. She says, “I don’t want to make it a race thing, but in so many ways, it is a race thing. When you see the white girls who come up missing, it’s broadcasted everywhere. But when a black girl goes missing, I hardly see anything.” To Toni’s point, it is easy to recall missing white girls and women who became household names, thanks to the media.

Movies have been made detailing the before and after circumstances surrounding their case. Books critiquing their cases and family members have gone to print. There’s Laci Peterson who, along with her unborn child, went missing in 2002 and was later found murdered by her husband, Scott Peterson. Her case sparked a national outrage. Media outlets shared her photo and covered the story incessantly. A Lifetime movie was made about her case, starring Dean Cain as Scott Peterson. Eighteen-year-old Natalee Holloway disappeared in 2005 during a trip with friends to Aruba after graduating from high school. Her face also became a staple in the news for several months. Eleven years later, in 2016, media outlets returned to the story of her disappearance. Her case also earned a film and later, a follow-up picture. And there’s no case more exemplary than JonBenét Patricia Ramsey, the 6-year-old beauty pageant queen who went missing in 1996. Twenty years later, her life is still prime for media coverage in the form of a 2016 magazine cover, documentary and Lifetime film.

Meanwhile, black women’s stories usually only stretch as far as the local news, if they are — as Toni describes how she got her daughter’s name circulated in Richmond — “lucky.” One of the only high-profile missing cases of a black woman is the Carlina White story, which was recounted in a Lifetime film like the women and girls previously mentioned. Carlina White was the exception, not the rule. The major difference: She solved her own kidnapping case as an adult after a birth certificate mix-up revealed she was taken as an infant. Outlets like Newsday and the New York Times covered her kidnapping in 1987, but she received national coverage after discovering her true identity in 2011. “Carlina White was the exception, not the rule.”