15-year-old fraternal twins, Dannette and Jeanette Millbrook lived in Augusta, Georgia, with their mom, Mary Sturgis, and five of their six siblings. The twins were in the 9th grade at Lucy Laney High School.
On the morning of March 18, 1990, the Millbrook family went to church as they did every Sunday. Later that afternoon, Mary sent the twins out to get lunch from Church’s Chicken. When the girls returned, Jeanette told her mom that someone in a white van had been following them. Mary looked outside but the van was already gone. She didn’t think much of it and assumed that the driver was simply headed in the same direction.
The Millbrook family had recently moved into a new apartment that was much more affordable, however, it was 3 miles away from the twins’ high school. Mary didn’t want the girls walking that far but she also didn’t have money to spare for the city bus. She suggested the girls ask their godfather, Ted, who lived in their old neighborhood, for some bus money.
The twins called Ted and he agreed to give them $20 — a week’s worth for the bus and a little extra for snacks. Dannette and Jeanette left their home at 3 pm to make the 3-mile walk to Ted’s home and never returned home. They vanished without a trace just 20 days before their 16th birthdays.
Later that evening, a concerned Mary called Ted wondering why Dannette and Jeanette hadn’t returned. He told her he gave the girls $20 before they left to visit their older sister, Aceander, who also lived in the area. Aceander told her mom that the twins seemed unsettled and asked her to walk them home. Aceander refused since she had just given birth days earlier.
From there, the twins went to visit their cousin, Juanita, who lived a block away from Aceander. Juanita told Mary that the girls asked her to walk them home but Juanita’s mother refused since it was getting dark out. Juanita last saw the girls as they headed in the direction of a nearby store.
At 4:30 pm, Dannette and Jeannette arrived at the now-closed Pump’n’Shop convenience store on the corner of 12th Street and Martin Luther King Jr Boulevard to buy soda, candy, and chips. The clerk, Gloria, knew the Millbrook twins as she was a family friend. She was also the last person to ever see them. Gloria told investigators she saw a car outside but she didn’t pay attention to the make or model since she was busy ringing up another customer. When Gloria looked up, the car was gone and so were the girls.
Mary called the police to report the twins missing but they refused to file a missing persons report until 24 hours had passed, wasting crucial time. Mary called back 24 hours later but it took an entire week before an investigator named Jim Shipp was finally assigned to the case.
Jim went to Lucy Laney High School and spoke with some of the twins’ classmates. They claimed that the girls ran away because one of them had gotten pregnant and didn’t want to get into trouble. However, this was just one of many bizarre rumors that spread through the halls which, if you’ve ever been to high school, you know is common. Another rumor was that the girls took off because their mom had “too many kids.”
Jim also spoke with the high school principal who has since passed away. He told Jim he saw Dannette and Jeanette after their disappearance. He said he called out to them but they took off running in the opposite direction. Based on this statement alone, Jim closed the case one year later in April 1991, and told Mary that her daughters had run away.
It was clear that the girls were nervous or afraid of someone, considering they didn’t usually ask anyone to accompany them on the 1-hour walk. Despite this, Jim refused to follow up on the mysterious white van that had followed them home the morning of their disappearance and he never even bothered to speak with John Millbrook, the twins’ father.
Mary claimed John was abusive when they were married. He wasn’t very involved in his daughter’s lives but the twins visited him on occasion. After they went missing, John told Mary not to bother looking for them and said they had probably run off with a man. He refused to give the police a sample of his DNA in case their bodies were found and even tried to convince Aceander not to provide one as well. However, both Aceander and Mary provided DNA samples. So far, no matches have been made.
In 2019, Dannette and Jeanette’s younger sister Shante who was only 12 years old when they disappeared stated, “He [John] basically didn’t even want to be involved in the girls’ case. He didn’t even want my mom looking for them. We’ve been trying to find out for the longest why didn’t he want to be involved. These are your daughters. Why wouldn’t you want to look for them?”
The Millbrook twins’ disappearance barely received any media attention and it seemed as though no one really cared that two 15-year-old girls had seemingly vanished into thin air. It wasn’t until 2013 that the case was finally reopened, swapping through five different investigators.
In 2017, potential serial killer Joseph Patrick Washington was named a suspect. He lived and worked near John Millbrook. In fact, they ran in the same circles and trafficked drugs from John’s apartment. All of his victims were young black girls and women with short hair, just like the Millbrook twins. In 1995, Joseph was sentenced to 17 years in prison, however, he died in 1999 long before he could be questioned about the twins.
In 1996, John helped Ernest Vaughns hide the body of a man he had mur*dered. He was sentenced to 4 years in prison for concealing a de*ath.
Years later while in prison, Ernest told investigators that when he was 12 years old, he was at John’s apartment along with the twins and 8 or 9 other men. Ernest claimed one of the twins became intoxicated and was taken advantage of by one of the men. When her sister came to her aid, the man assaulted her and told Ernest and the others to leave. When Ernest came back later, the girls were gone and they were never seen again.
Shante insists that her sisters didn’t drink or do drugs, and John can’t be interviewed as he is now in a care home for Dementia patients. In 2019, Shante stated she went to visit John and when she asked him if he knew what had happened to the twins, he said they were dead and buried. He later recanted his statement and refused to talk about the girls again.
In 2019, Jim Shipp doubled down on his belief that Dannette and Jeannette ran away. Mary denied the possibility stating, “They weren’t the type of girls that stayed out like that, they always went to school and when they got out of school they came straight home.” Shante said her sisters were quiet, introverted teen girls who didn’t have a history of running away, never got into trouble at school, and didn’t have any behavioral problems.
Mary Sturgis, now 67, is still searching for her two beloved daughters nearly 33 years later stating, “As long as I live, I’ll still be waiting.”
Age-progression photos of (L)Dannette and (R) Jeannette Millbrook at 39 years old
Today, Dannette and Jeannette Millbrook would be 48 years old. If you have any information. A $50,000 reward is being offered to anyone with knowledge of the Millbrook twins’ whereabouts.
