An Alabama woman who seemingly went missing four years ago after meeting a man online and moving to Germany has been found safe, her family has announced.
Nicole Denise Jackson apparently just stopped talking to her friends and family more than two years ago, which has left loved ones worried and distraught.
Nearly a week ago, a private investigator hired by the family tracked down Jackson, who also voluntarily presented herself at the German state department to prove who she was, according to AL.com.
Still, though, Jackson has not yet reached out to family to explain why she chose to vanish from their lives.
“I’m more at peace. I’d still like to hear her voice,’’ Jackson’s sister Ela Vaughn told AL.com. “I’m happy to know our prayers have been answered. She’s safe, and she’s OK.”
Although Jackson’s reemergence has quieted a four-year mystery, Vaughn maintains that it seemed unimaginable that her sister would simply cut off from her family and friends back home.
“She’ll reach out to us when he’s ready,’’ Vaughn told AL.com. “I feel a whole lot better. She will eventually reach out. I know she will. "
Previously, Vaughn described being determined to find Jackson — a 23-year-old student who left Birmingham toward the end of 2018 to pursue her dreams in music but went off the radar after she sent text messages to her family in late 2019.
“After that, all communication stopped,” Vaughn told AL.com. “None of the numbers we had for her were good.”
Vaughn said she and other friends and family last spoke with Jackson on the phone around Christmastime in 2018 and soon discovered her Instagram account had been deleted, which deepened the mystery of her whereabouts over the following year.
“At the end of 2019, we were trying to make decisions on what we were going to do, and then the pandemic happened,” Vaughn said, according to AL.com.
That’s when Vaughn said her job as a traveling nurse stole her focus. Her concerns were also eased as family members would still receive text messages from Jackson from time to time and special occasions. Whenever family tried to call her number back, however, they were unable to reach her.
The whole experience left Vaughn feeling incredulous.
“I know deep down something’s not right,” Vaughn said at the time. “I know this is not like her. When I say no one has talked to her, I mean no one.”
Vaughn initially hit a dead end after reaching out to the U.S. Consulate in Munich for help. She also filed a missing person’s report with the Bavarian State Police, which found “no records of Jackson leaving” the country.
Vaughn also started a GoFundMe page that raised a little more than $3,000 to help her and her father travel to Germany in the coming weeks in hopes of finding some sign of Jackson.
Meanwhile, Vaughn managed to get into her sister’s emails and found out the identity of Jackson’s boyfriend, and then she reached out to his boss and his landlord.
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