It was this week more than two decades ago when 12-year-old Tiffany Michele Goines vanished from her close-knit Frederick neighborhood. On Dec. 5, 1987, Tiffany left her apartment to go play with friends. It was a Saturday and the weather was chilly, but not so cold that the 5-foot, 70-pound girl needed to bundle up.
When suppertime came around, Tiffany hadn’t returned home, and the family went looking for her, checking with friends and driving around town all night without any luck.
“She’s just disappeared into a puff of smoke,” said Melinda Stevens, director of the missing children’s division at the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children in Alexandria.
Witnesses later told police Tiffany was last seen getting into a red convertible near the apartment complex, the since-demolished John Hanson Apartments on North Bentz Street.
Neither Tiffany nor the red convertible has been seen since, Stevens said.
Tiffany, a sixth-grader at Governor Thomas Johnson Middle School, wore a white sweat shirt, blue pants, brown gloves, a white belt and white shoes without any shoelaces. She had large framed glasses, and one eye tended to look inward.
The NCMEC used age progression technology to estimate what Tiffany might look like today, more than 20 years after her disappearance. She would be 35 years old.
Her mother, Betty Goines, told the Maryland Gazette in 2006 that she sleeps on the couch every night in the hopes that Tiffany will come home through the front door.
Anyone who has information about this case is asked to call the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children at 800-THE-LOST (843-5678) or the Frederick Police Department at 301-624-1227.
Staff Writer Emily Babay contributed to this story.
