All she wants is "closure." After six long years and a trail short on leads, Jane Baxter has just about given up. Just about.
Baxter, 82, of Herndon, wants to place flowers on the grave of her daughter, Janeth Ann Rowe. There is only one slight problem. Nobody knows where Janeth Rowe's body is, or if she is actually dead.
Six years ago, sometime between the evening of March 2, 1997 and the morning of March 3, one of Baxter's two fraternal twins disappeared without a trace. At the time of her disappearance, Janeth Rowe, a 51-year-old widow, was living with her daughter, Lisa Rowe, 20, in their first floor condominium in the Crescent at Worldgate complex in Herndon.
In November 1993, Baxter, her twin daughters and granddaughter all moved to the same condominium at Alton Square in Herndon. The four women occupied three units down the hall from each other.
Six years later, Baxter and Newman still live there, Lisa Rowe lives in Leesburg and Janeth Rowe's whereabouts remain a mystery. Today, Janeth Rowe, who would be 56, remains the only active adult missing persons case in the Herndon Police Department.
After a search of the area, the Herndon police turned to the FBI for assistance. According to police, Janeth Rowe's personal information, "was entered into the FBI's VICAP (Violent Criminal Apprehension Program), which is designed to facilitate cooperation, communication, and coordination between law enforcement agencies throughout the country to locate missing persons, and into NCIC (National Crime Information Center) as a 'missing and endangered' person."
<b>IN A RELEASE MARKING</b> the sixth anniversary of Janeth Rowe's disappearance, Sgt. Jerry Keys said her family is "still hoping and praying for her safe return." Some members are more optimistic than others, however.
"Unlike my grandma and aunt, I feel like my mom is still alive," Lisa Rowe said. She thinks her mom had had enough. Eight months before her disappearance, Janeth Rowe was laid off from her job at Mobil. Her daughter said she watched as her mom mailed out 600 resumes. "No one wanted to hire a 50-year-old widow," Lisa Rowe said.
Eventually she was hired by a Washington consulting company, her family said. "I was 21 or 22 when she disappeared because by then she knew I could take care of myself," she said. "So, yeah, I think she just walked off in search of a new life. She was fed up."
In search of clues, Baxter and her other daughter even consulted a well-known television psychic, Sylvia Brown.
While the granddaughter holds out hope to someday reunite with her mom, the grandmother seems to think she has seen the last of her missing daughter. "I would certainly like to have closure at this point," Baxter said. "I find it hard to believe she is alive after all this time. We feel like she is gone, it is hard to have hope."
<b>WHEN HERNDON POLICE</b> officers arrived at Janeth Rowe's condominium in March 1997, they found her car in the garage and her belongings still in her home. Police found no signs of a struggle but never ruled out the possibility of foul play. James Moore, the Herndon detective assigned to the Rowe case, insists the police do not have any suspects. He has, however, called Lisa Rowe and her long-term boyfriend and father of their two infant daughters, Steve Cordell, "persons of interest."
"My life has fallen apart since she left," Lisa Rowe said. She lost her mother's condominium and she had to pawn off all of her possessions to stay financially afloat. In the months following her mother's disappearance, Lisa Rowe admits she stole her grandmother's credit card numbers, an act that raised eyebrows, if not suspicions, at the Herndon Police Department. She is currently on probation for the credit card theft.
"It is not like we aren't getting cooperation," said Moore. "It is just that we didn't get enough evidence to lead us in any one way."
For her part, Lisa Rowe can only roll her eyes at those, especially her mother's sister, who think she, or Cordell, had something to do with her mom's disappearance. "It's a joke, but I am used to it."
Just three weeks ago, Lisa Rowe, who lives in Leesburg, was, once again, interviewed by Moore for three hours in the trailer that house the Criminal Investigations Section of the Herndon Police Department. Unlike previous investigators, Lisa Rowe says she has faith in Moore.
Without a crime scene or a body, the case will remain extremely difficult to solve, Moore said. "I hope we find a body," Moore said. "Then I think something will happen."