The Missing Millbrook Twins
This is a tragedy that takes us into America’s never-ending struggle with race and class.
Fraternal twins Dannette Latonia and Jeannette Latrice Millbrook, who were 15 years old when they vanished on March 18, 1990, were from Augusta, Georgia, in the United States. The family headed home for lunch after attending Sunday services at the Christ Presbyterian church in their hometown of Augusta, Georgia.
After picking up the family meal at 2:00 that afternoon, the girls discovered they would need bus fare to get to Lucy C. Laney High School for class that week because they had recently moved to Cooney Circle. They thus walked the two miles, or roughly forty minutes, to get to their former stomping grounds from their new residence. Their first destination was the home of their godfather Ted on Forest Street. They proceeded to 12th Street where their cousin Juanita was staying after getting the $20 bus fare and a bit extra for snacks. Since it would soon get dark, Juanita’s mother forbade her from walking home with them despite their request.
They stopped at their older sister’s house after seeing their cousin, where they spent around fifteen minutes. Their older sister was asked to walk with them as well, but she declined because she had just given birth. The twins’ repeated requests for companionship on that day’s walk home were deemed strange by family members following their disappearance. Shanta said it was odd for them to ask for someone to accompany them on the way home since they knew the neighbourhood very well. “I’m gonna assume something had to [transpire] for them to want somebody to walk home,” Shanta said. Earlier that day when the family returned from the church the twins told their mom, Louise, that they saw a man in a van following them for a certain distance as they walked. But there is no further information about that mysterious man.
They then proceeded to a nearby gas station to purchase soda, candy, and chips. Gloria, the counter clerk, knew the twins. She couldn’t think of anything unusual about their actions. She sees Jeannette and Dannette for the last time.
The Twins
Dannette and Jeannette Millbrook hail from a large family. They had eight brothers and sisters growing up, some older and others younger. The twins were raised by their mother, Mary Sturgis, also known as “Louise,” who put much effort into giving her kids the greatest life possible. The girls’ father did not have a significant role in their upbringing. The twins’ bond with their paternal grandparents was steady, nevertheless. Despite being identical twins, Dannette and Jeannette each had a distinct personality. Shanta Sturgis, the younger sister, described Jeannette as a calmer, more reserved version of her twin, but she was still a sweet girl who liked animals and children. Shanta described both of them as good girls. “They really didn’t go anywhere, you know, they didn’t hang out or anything like that,” she said. “If they did, it would be, you know, all of us together with my mom.”
The girls both have scars from hernia surgeries and had some minor health difficulties as children. In addition, Dannette was said to walk somewhat bow-legged and had a history of seizures that needed daily medication. In their area, the girls were well-known for being comparatively quiet and gentle. But their personalities were very similar to the differences found in most twins: one becomes the “dominant twin,” while the other stays submissive. Of the two, Dannette was the friendliest and frequently acted as Jeannette’s advocate. The twin who was most likely to correct you when you behaved badly was Dannette; Jeannette would probably ignore it. The opposite of the twin, Jeannette, is far more submissive. Some people who knew Jeannette described her as docile… almost to a fault. She was known to tolerate bullying and taunting without any retaliation, despite her profound empathy and kindness, which were frequently shown when she was caring for her kitty, Jennifer.
The Unfair Investigation
The family of Jeannette and Dannette Millbrook got terrified the moment they did not come home on the evening of March 18, 1990. In an attempt to report her girls missing, Louise called the police. Louise was informed by the Richmond County Sheriff’s Office that filing a missing person report would require her to wait at least twenty-four hours. Louise was forced to set out on her own to try and locate her girls since she was not receiving any assistance from the police. Shanta, who was twelve at the time, went with her and remembers that her mother had to search the bushes by the pavement for the girls because she was concerned they might have become victims of the ongoing crime sprees.
Louise managed to register a missing persons report for each of her daughters on the evening of March 19. Later in the week, a detective arrived to get some firsthand information and statements from the twins’ relatives. But soon after, the detective turned the case over to a young investigator, who is now deceased. For the following few months, this young investigator worked on the case, and the twins’ family had to put their trust in him and the investigation. Sadly for the family, it appears that neither the original detective nor this young investigator ever truly took the matter seriously. Before the truth was ever known, Jeannette and Dannette were both declared to be runaways.
Some persons were questioned by the police, including the woman who had worked at the Pump’n’Shop the night the twins vanished. And their godfather, to whose house they had gone for their bus fare for the week. Though some of the last persons known to have seen the twins, family members and friends, including their cousin and sister, whom they had visited on the way home, were not questioned by the police. Nobody spoke to their father, who had not been very close to the twins and would subsequently be proven to have a criminal past. He had a tense connection with the teenagers and lived near where they vanished, but he wasn’t even interviewed when they vanished.
The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, often known as NCMEC, provided the family with some assistance by printing and hanging several fliers and posters featuring the twins’ images. They were happy to aid this low-income family after receiving a report about the girls from their organization. The family attempted to get in touch with various organizations and press outlets, but they were met with no response. Given that the authorities appeared to be treating the two missing black youths as runaways, it appears that the case wasn’t given much attention at the time.
“The whole year of 1990, we didn’t get no information, you know, about them,” Shanta said. “They didn’t get any media attention. They were put on the news once.”
Then, according to Shanta, on April 8, 1993 — six days after the twins’ 17th birthday — the investigator on their case came out to the family home to tell their mother that the case was being closed because Dannette and Jeannette had been located.
According to Shanta, the investigator never provided the family with any additional information after allegedly contacting the NCMEC and requesting that Dannette and Jeannette be removed from their database. Shanta recounted, “If he had found them, he said he couldn’t make them go back home because they were 17 years old.” At this time, they could not be made to go back home, wherever they were, because of Georgia’s rules about teen runaways. Furthermore, there was no motive for the police to keep searching for them because they were thought to be runaways.
Subsequent interrogation by Louise indicated that the girls’ placement in foster care and subsequent adoption by a different family was known to the authorities. Naturally, this violates established procedures, as the mother of the twins was not informed of this and it was believed that Louise had never been contacted by Child Protective Services over any of her children.
The police didn't find any evidence and they also had most of the information regarding the twins wrong. The day the twins’ family was informed that their case was being closed during their meeting with the detective. April 8th. This occurred on April 7, the day after the girls’ alleged 17th birthday. However, they were not born on April 7th. The 2nd of April was their birthday. Contrary to what has been repeatedly stated in news reports and police records, their last name was Millbrook, not Millbrooks. Instead of walking along Florence Street the day they vanished, they took a stroll down Forest Street.
The Struggle for Justice
The family of Dannette and Jeannette Millbrook appealed to John Walsh, Oprah Winfrey, and other TV celebrities for years to tell their side of the story on their shows. They were disregarded. To inquire about the whereabouts of their lost loved ones, they attempted to contact NCMEC and the police. While they weren’t completely disregarded, they were given a range of responses, some of which directly went against what they had been informed before. Louise, the twins’ mother, found this difficult. She was dealing with this sorrow while raising a family at the time, and she found it difficult to provide for them.
Ultimately, Shanta, the children’s younger sister, had to assume the role of family point of link. Shanta reached out to other mystery and true crime podcast hosts as their popularity grew. Out of those, only two — Thin Air and The Trail Went Cold — responded, and they both released episodes about Dannette and Jeannette during the period when the case’s details were incredibly disjointed. Laurah and Brook launched a fundraising campaign to increase public awareness of the case. Establishing a reward for information — which is currently worth over $8000 — has been successful. The Richmond County Sheriff’s Office had originally declared its intention to match any reward contributions — essentially doubling the reward for information. However, ever since then, the Sheriff’s Office has remained hesitant to commit to anything. They have not tried to publicize the reward at all, or even announce it.
Reopening the case
Shanta told News 12, “So from 1991 to 2013, nobody was looking for my sisters. Nobody. Not the sheriff. Nobody. Period. Nobody but family.”
In 2013, Shanta saw a video on TV of the newly-elected Sheriff of Augusta-Richmond County, Richard Roundtree. “I see him talking on the news, and I’ve seen some of the commercials that they had been making,” she said. “He wanted to help his community and stuff like that.” Feeling that a fresh set of eyes might help the case Shanta contacts the sheriff.
In media releases the sheriff was quoted as saying, “We think a terrible injustice has been done for the last 20 years” which helped to fuel interest in the new investigation.
In 2017, according to Shanta, her mother and older sister provided DNA samples to the authorities. Nothing has come of it, she said, even though it is now in the system. Shanta said that every five years, the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children updates the images showing Dannette and Jeannette’s age progression. When the case was revived by investigators in 2013, Shanta felt optimistic. “I thought, you know, by them opening it, maybe they could have found out what happened to them,” she said. They could have got in contact with somebody, really put somebody on the case that was really gonna do an investigation because when they first went missing, it really wasn’t no investigation to our knowledge.”
Shanta is the administrator of the “Missing Dannette and Jeannette Millbrook” Facebook page, where she posts news and updates regarding her sisters’ cases. Additionally, a nearby billboard points passersby to themillbrooktwins.com, the website where they can provide information on the case. There is currently a $50,000 incentive for information leading to the case’s resolution. Shanta informed Dateline that if a resolution to the matter is not reached by August 2023, the reward will be lowered to $11,000.
Shanta just hopes there’s still time to find answers. “I want my mom to be able to —. You know, if something were to happen to her, I want her to be able to rest knowing that she found out what happened to her daughters,” Shanta said. Unfortunately, Louise’s eldest daughter, the one whose DNA was submitted in 2017 to help with Dannette and Jeannette’s case, died the following year — on the twins’ birthday.
Shanta claims that on the day they vanished, Jeannette was dressed in a khaki skirt and a white turtleneck, while Dannette was dressed in white trousers and a white Mickey Mouse top. Both girls have brown eyes, and when they vanished, their hair was styled in short Jheri curls. Today, they would be 49 years old.
Media
The Millbrook twins’ disappearance is examined in length in the first season of The Fall Line podcast. Numerous additional podcasts, such as My Favorite Murder, Thin Air, The Trail Went Cold, Unresolved, and Crime Junkie, focused on the case of the twins’ disappearance. Oxygen Media aired a two-hour television special on the case, which premiered on November 23, 2019.
“I pray and I’m still hoping,” Mary told Augusta’s CBS 12 News recently. “I ain’t going to give up on them.” But “every time you think you got somebody to help, and you think you take a step forward, you got to take a step back. I don’t think they think my children were important enough to go out and look for.”
Anyone with information can contact the Richmond County Police Department dispatch at the non-emergency line of 706–821–1080, or the Criminal Investigations Division at 706–821–1020. The Fall Line is assisting the Millbrook family, along with another organization, by crowd-sourcing for a Private Investigator. You can find their GoFundMe HERE.
The twins are still missing due to the negligence and injustice done by the police. Is it because they were black people? If so, this is so devastating.
I hope the Twins and family receive the justice they deserve.
References
- https://www.nbcnews.com/dateline/cold-case-spotlight/little-sister-still-searching-twins-dannette-jeannette-millbrook-last-rcna80952
- https://unresolved.me/millbrook
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disappearance_of_Dannette_and_Jeannette_Millbrook
- https://www.wjbf.com/coldcase/cold-case-project-the-millbrook-twins/
- https://www.eonline.com/news/1095861/the-devastating-story-behind-the-disappearance-of-the-millbrook-twins
