An Alabama family is desperately searching for a young woman who vanished three years ago after moving to Germany with a man she reportedly met online.
Nicole Denise Jackson, a 23-year-old student who left Birmingham toward the end of 2018 to pursue her dreams in music, hasn’t been heard from since she sent text messages to her family in late 2019.
“After that, all communication stopped,’' Jackson’s sister Ela 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 was out of character and only served to deepen 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 took her focus away from her worries. Her concerns were also eased as family members would still receive text messages from Jackson from time to time, especially on occasions like birthdays. Whenever family tried to call her number back, however, they were unable to reach her.
Vaughn said she only recently discovered that Jackson was dating a man she had met online, but remains clueless to the person’s identity.
“I just found a few months ago they met online,’' Vaughn said, according to AL.com. “I thought it was somebody she went to school with.”
“I know deep down something’s not right,” Vaughn said. “I know this is not like her. When I say no one has talked to her, I mean no one.”
A GoFundMe page has so far raised a little more than $3,000 to help Vaughn and her father travel to Germany in the coming weeks in hopes of finding some sign of Jackson.
The 2015 graduate of Pleasant Grove High School outside Birmingham left behind a host of close friends and cousins who haven’t heard a word from her in two years.
Vaughn has reached out to the U.S. Consulate in Munich and filed a missing person’s report with the Bavarian State Police, which found “no records of her leaving” the country.
“I might not ever find her, but I just know she wouldn’t be off the grid like this,” Vaughn told AL.com. “The embassy has been trying to locate her ... They do have an address for her, but they haven’t been able to reach her at all.”
If anyone has information on Jackson’s whereabouts, they are asked to call Ela Vaughn at 205-377-3740 or Antonio Jackson at 205-317-5245.
About the Author
