Hoping for an Answer
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Hoping for an Answer

D.C. police officials believe they may have found the body of a woman who disappeared in 1996.

She was last seen at 1 p.m. leaving her grandmother’s house on East Raymond Avenue in Alexandria with her estranged boyfriend — a man family members blame for the disappearance of Shaquita Bell, 23, an attractive mother of three who worked at a Giant in Springfield. The date was June 27, 1996, and Bell has not been seen since. Now — 11 years after the disappearance — police officials in the District of Columbia have dispatched cadaver dogs and a search team to Fort Washington, Md., to look for additional remains. The search began last week, and Washington police officials acknowledge that they are investigating the possibility that they have found Bell’s remains.

"The chief has ordered a continuation of the search this week," said Officer Junis Fletcher, a spokesman for the Washington Metropolitan Police Department. "At this point, we’re trying to determine more about the remains."

For more than a decade, Bell’s disappearance has troubled family members and friends at My Father’s House Christian Church. Each year, the church holds a special ceremony to remember Bell that includes dancing, singing, poetry and even fashion. Church officials say the remembrance is an opportunity to put a spotlight on the dangers of domestic violence and show support for Bell’s three surviving children: Ashley, 16; Devontae, 13, and Alexis, 11.

"They are now in the 11th year of her disappearance and they consider it to be the 11th hour," read an invitation to the June 30 event. "It is in God’s timing that they should hear from Him."

THE TIMING OF BELL’S disappearance dovetails with countless other missing persons cases — sad chapters that linger as bitter memories for family and friends who are left with fading memories and unanswered questions. A month before she was last seen — June 1996 — Bell called police to report that her estranged boyfriend had beaten her during a squabble in the Laurel apartment that they shared. The boyfriend, Michael Dickerson, was arrested and Bell moved in with her grandmother in Alexandria. On the day of Bell’s disappearance, Dickerson had driven Bell to take two of her three children to a doctor's appointment. They returned to the grandmother’s house shortly after noon. Shortly afterward, Bell and Dickerson left together — the last time she was seen alive. Around 2 p.m. she called to say she would be home soon but she was never heard from again.

"All evidence points to Dickerson," proclaimed a missing-person flyer distributed by Bell’s church.

Washington police officials thought they had a break in the case several years ago, when Dickerson’s friend told investigators where Dickerson said he had buried the body. Yet the friend was murdered the day before he was supposed to wear a wire during a meeting with Dickerson, who is currently serving time for the assault-and-battery case against Bell. The Washington Police Department searched the Fort Washington area where the man said Dickerson claimed to have buried Bell. But the results were inconclusive and police officials suspended the investigation. Bell’s family, however, did not.

"The Bible says that God answers in the 11th hour," said Jackie Winbourne, Bell’s mother. "God told me that an answer would come in the 11th hour."

Eleven years after the disappearance, Bell’s annual remembrance ceremony brought media attention and television coverage. One of the viewers who saw Winbourne on television was Washington Police Chief Cathy Lanier, who invited family members to a July 4 meeting at police headquarters to talk about the case. During the meeting, police officials asked Winbourne how they could renew the stalled investigation.

"I thank God for Chief Lanier," said Winbourne. "She has such compassion, and she is an amazing woman."

AS THE COLD CASE heats up, police officials are continuing to search the area in Fort Washington where investigators believe that Dickerson buried Bell. Because of the 11-year passage of time, police officials have brought a Smithsonian bone expert into the investigation and conducted several sweeps of the area where the remains were discovered last week. DNA samples have been taken from family members and the analysis is now being conducted on the remains. Washington police officials say that no identification has been confirmed yet, but one could come any day.

"Part of me, of course, doesn’t want it to be her," said Winbourne. "But if she’s not going to come home I want closure."