With the 35-year anniversary of 13-year-old Gina Dawn Brooks’ disappearance coming up Monday, the case is once again in the news after investigators recently finished a week-long search of a 120-acre Bollinger County property about 15 miles from where Brooks went missing while riding her bike in Fredericktown following her brother’s baseball game.
“Throughout the course of the search, items of possible evidentiary value were collected and will be forwarded to the Missouri State Highway Patrol Crime Laboratory for analysis,” Sheriff Graham said. “However, no human remains were located. The investigation into the disappearance of Gina Dawn Brooks is active and ongoing.”
The Fredericktown teenager disappeared without a trace Aug. 5, 1989. Witnesses reported seeing Brooks riding her bike outside the First Baptist Church on College Street, just two blocks from her home. People inside a battered station wagon reportedly confronted her, and after continuing to ride a few more blocks down to High Street, she was heard screaming for help as the station wagon drove away.
Three men were implicated in her disappearance, but none were convicted due to lack of evidence.
In 1999, Nathan "Danny" Williams was charged with first-degree murder and pleaded not guilty. While his murder charge was dropped in 2003, he was convicted of rape and sodomy and is serving a life sentence in the Missouri Department of Corrections. Williams was charged with the murder of another young girl, but that charge was also dropped. He is a suspect in another 12-year-old's disappearance case in 1979.
On July 22, 2024, Bollinger County Sheriff Casey A. Graham stated that his office, along with the Missouri State Highway Patrol’s Division of Drug and Crime, Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Missouri Attorney General’s Office, and the Fredericktown Police Department, began a search of a rural Bollinger County property on Bollinger County Road 872.
Anyone with information about the case is asked to contact the FBI tip line at 1-800-CALL-FBI, the Missouri Highway Patrol Division of Drug and Crime Control/Missouri State Highway Patrol Troop E Headquarters at 573-840-9500, the Fredericktown Police Department at 573-783-3660, or submit information through tips.fbi.gov.