A group of civilian divers known as Adventures with Purpose has helped police in various jurisdictions solve around 20 cold missing person cases in only a few short years. What started as a hobby has turned out to be the knowledge required for many families of missing persons to finally get closure after years without answers.
While many people were avoiding crowded public places indoors during the shelter in place order, one group of Youtube divers called Adventures with Purpose was just dipping their toe into diving as a form of visual entertainment. It began with them fishing trash out of bodies of water back in 2019 as part of an effort to clean up and beautify natural bodies of water, extracting debris as big as a cars. When the group was contacted by a Missouri family who was missing a loved one who had been presume dead, a new opportunity presented itself. The family believed their loved one’s remains may have been located in a nearby river, and would the Adventures with Purpose group be able to get them answers. After hours of searching, the dive was a success, with Adventures with purpose recovering not only the missing man’s remains, but also his truck. This was the beginning of Adventures with Purpose turning their expertise towards finding missing people.
Since that first dive, Adventures with Purpose has helped police solve around 20 cold missing person cases. Just recently, in Delaware County, Pennsylvania, the collective spent 10 hours dragging Darby Creek, and successfully helped to close another case that has been cold for almost 20 years. The family of James Amabile, 38, finally got the answers they needed. Amabile was last seen in December of 2003 when he left his mother’s home for the babysitter’s house to pick up his young daughters. Knowing that he would never abandon his kids, the family believed it was likely that Amabile, who was a diabetic, had gone into diabetic shock during the drive and may have been involved in an accident. Adventures with Purpose was able to pinpoint Darby Creek as the most likely place where this accident may have occurred, and tracked a vehicle on sonar about 24 feet below the water’s surface. The divers found the wreckage of Amabile’s vehicle with his remains still buckled into the front seat.
Many in the area have been surprised to learn that a group of hobbyist divers turned missing person advocates are the ones providing police with valuable intel that closes cases. Volunteers throughout the nation make up the cold case divers’ group, and they come from a mosaic of backgrounds, including sonar tech professionals and content creators who work together to promote their Youtube channel and tell the world about their good work. With more than 2 million subscribers on their channel, the interest in their mission is unmistakable. Even more stunning, Adventures with Purpose offers their services completely free of charge to the families of missing persons, funding these dives through donations and merchandising sales.
Adventures with Purpose is reportedly moving on to another case in Pennsylvania—the disappearance of a young couple, Danielle Imbo and Richard Petrone, who were last seen leaving a local bar in 2005. Divers will be looking for their Dodge Dakota pickup truck, and hopefully be able to provide closure to yet another family of missing persons.
Throughout the Chicago area, mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, and scores of others are still missing their loved ones—young Black women and girls who have vanished without a trace, and have not been heard of since. Young Black women like Kierra Coles, the pregnant postal carrier who was last seen leaving her apartment building in October, 2018, or Sheena Gibbs, who was last seen at her home in Roger’s Park just last November. For some families, the wait for answers has been even longer and more excruciating, like the family of Tionda and Diamond Bradley, two sisters who vanished from their Chicago home over 20 years ago. However much time has passed, there is an entire group of missing women and girls whose families are being left to twist in the wind without closure.
Kierra Coles, the pregnant postal carrier who was last seen leaving her apartment building in October, 2018
To call the phenomenon of missing Black women and girls is a crisis is a total understatement. In 2020 alone, the total amount of women who were reported missing was 268,884. Almost 100,000 of those women were Black. It seems like a mathematical mistake that Black women only make up 15% of the population, yet somehow account for more than a third of the total amount of missing women. And yet somehow, families of missing Black women and girls have had to claw and scream to get a fraction of the attention given to cases of missing white women.
After all, the amount of media attention given to the Gabby Petito case felt like a constant stream of breaking news updates beamed directly to our smart phones—a constant barrage of television interviews with experts in missing persons, full visibility of Gabbi’s face, and a fierce pseudo-evangelism in the smallest details of her disappearance. A nation-wide manhunt was launched for the person of interest in her disappearance, and police were unyielding in their search.
Meanwhile, Karen Phillips, the mother of Kierra Coles, has been unable to get updates in her daughter’s case in two years. “Because she’s the color she is, that evidence don’t mean nothing…Every time they call, they’re on vacation. They have more vacation than anyone that I know.”
In a virtual caucus led by Congresswoman Robin Kelly last month, Mayor Lori Lightfoot “And in Chicago, we just have to be honest and say we don’t have a good track record on this topic of finding missing Black women and girls, supporting their families and survivors, solving homicides related to Black women. We absolutely must do better.”
In effort to supplement the search for their beloved daughter and friend, the family of Sheena Gibbs has begun a GoFundMe campaign to raise the monies necessary to fund an independent investigation into her disappearance—a course of action that many families of missing Black women and girls are forced to take when they cannot get the attention or resources their case deserves through typical channels like the media or law enforcement. Even if every family was able to reach their funding goal for the costs of these comprehensive investigations, there are still only a finite amount of private investigators in the world, and hundreds of thousands of missing Black women and girls whose families deserve answers and closure.
Sheena Gibbs, who was last seen at her home in Roger’s Park just last November.
Sheena Gibbs is described as 5’9”, 180-pound Black woman with brown eyes and black hair. Sheena was getting ready to leave for a trip to Davenport, Iowa to care for her mother, who has been hospitalized. When Sheena spoke to her family on 11/03/2021, Sheen advised that she would be arriving in Davenport the following day. No one has seen or heard from Sheena since. You can support her family’s GoFundMe campaign here.
Kierra Coles is described as a 5’4″, 125-pound Black woman with brown eyes, black hair, and a medium-brown complexion, police said. She has a tattoo of a heart on her right hand and one that reads “Lucky Libra” on her back. Anyone with information about Kierra Coles can call the Area South Special Victims Unit at 312-747-8274 or the U.S. Postal Inspection Service at 877-876-2455.
An Illinois family is asking for the public’s help with any information that might lead to the whereabouts of their 20 year-old daughter, Keriaye Michelle Winfrey. Keriaye was last seen in Mt. Vernon, IL on January 9, 2022 around 3:00 P.M. in the area of the Family Life Church shelter.
When her mother arrived at the shelter to pick her up, Keriaye was nowhere to be found. Her family described this disappearance as very uncharacteristic of her, and knows she would never just vanish without calling or letting someone know where she was going.
At the time of her disappearance, Keriaye Winfrey was like many 20 year-old young women—simply trying to navigate her way through young adulthood and find her direction in life. Keriaye loves kids and has a dream of opening her own daycare. Her family described her as having a friendly, albeit quiet, demeanor. Before she disappeared, she liked to spend her free time reading and spending quality time with her family—especially her siblings, to whom she is very close. After months without answers, her family is still twisting in the wind. Now her family is following the course of action many families of missing persons take by hiring a private investigator to conduct an indepedent search for Keriaye Winfrey. They are trying to crowdfund the monies for the investigation by starting a GoFundMe. If you would like to donate to the fund for the search into Keriaye’s disappearance, you can do so here.
Keriaye is 20 years old, stands at 5’4”, weighs approximately 115lbs, has short black hair, brown eyes, and was last seen wearing a black shirt, blue jeans, royal blue Nike shoes, a black and white jacket, and was carrying a small purse. If you have any information on Keriaye’s whereabouts, please call investigators at 317-675-6701.
As missing person casese go cold, there is a lonely echo across generations that reverberates off the void left by missing loved ones. For one woman, solving the disappearance of her mother’s brother, Jerry Moore, has become a personal mission to bring her family the closure they deserve.
Jerry Wayne Moore, who vanished over 25 years ago in October of 1996 in McKenzie, TN. He stands 5’4”, weighing 135lbs, with reddish brown hair and brown eyes. He has a cleft in his chin, a scar on his left hand, and a tattoo of a rose on his left arm.
Bottom left to right: Jerry Moore, Bonnie, Frances (Jerry’s mother, deceased), Ginger (Jerry’s sister). Top left to right: (Debbie’s ex-husband Michael), Debbie (Jerry’s niece, deceased), Donna (Jerry’s sister deceased), Goodwin (Jerry’s uncle deceased), Jeannie (Jerry’s sister-in-law), Lloyd (Jerry’s brother, deceased)
Jerry disappeared after visiting with his mother on October 5, 1996. He walked away from his car without ID, money, a coat, or even a flashlight to navigate in the pitch black of night. The circumstances of his disappearance deeply troubled his family, because they did not consider him likely to want to disappear on his own. At the time of his disappearance, Jerry was a newlywed, getting ready to move into a new house, start a new business, and move to Arizona with his brand-new bride. Jerry has always been a big outdoorsman—hunting, fishing, swimming, and a huge fan of baseball.
When Jerry’s mother didn’t hear from him, she knew he was deceased because he was always checking on her, and would never let her worry. To many in Jerry’s family, it also didn’t make sense that he would vanish into thin air when his health had been in decline. Jerry had been hospitalized not too long before he went missing. He’d been having seizures and had a bout of pneumonia that left him temporarily on a ventilator. While under a doctor’s care, Jerry was also receiving disability benefits in order to support himself because he could not work. Without those benefits, it’s highly unlikely he would have simply relocated. His family did not consider him economically or physically well enough to simply disappear.
Jerry’s disappearance has directly altered the course of his family. His mother’s physical and mental health took a huge hit before her death. Following Jerry’s disappearance, she flat-out refused to reenter the home they had shared—even to retrieve her belongings—because the reminders of her son were much too devastating. One of Jerry’s sisters was diagnosed with cancer a year after his disappearance due to an onset of stress, and his brother passed away as well. Now, the daughter of his last surviving sister is trying to make sure that her family is finally able to get answers in his disappearance, going to the lengths of becoming a private investigator in order to get to the bottom of her uncle’s disappearance.
As she watched her family suffer for years without her Uncle Jerry, his niece, Dillon was inspired to become a private investigator so that she could continue the search on behalf of her grandmother, her aunts and uncles, and her own mother, Jerry’s only surviving sibling. Though she is not currently practicing as a private investigator, her body of knowledge continues to benefit missing persons and their families through her advocacy. Jerry’s disappearance inadvertently changed the course of Dillon’s entire life, giving her a passion for helping other families of missing persons. She is able to empathize with the rotting silence of long years without answers and how families are left in an arresting state of limbo with no forward and no backward. Dillon is in the process of forming a non-profit that will focus on providing quality resources for families of missing persons. She plans to call it Justice’s Journey.
After decades with no answers, Dillon is attempting to fund an independent investigation into her uncle’s disappearance. A GoFundMe account has been established to pull in the necessary monies. You can donate to that GoFundMe campaign here: https://gofund.me/f1bef1f7
Cold cases like Jerry’s can often seem like a black hole after so many years without answers, but make no mistake that there are real people still out there who are searching for Jerry. He deserves to be brought in from the cold and given a proper burial.
The search for a missing Indiana woman has gone national this week. Authorities in Johns Creek, Georgia have joined the search for missing Carmel resident Ciera Breland, following reports that she may have been in Johns Creek a week before she was reported missing. Ciera has been described as five feet tall, 120lbs, with blonde hair, and was last seen wearing a black top with purple shorts. Despite the fact that she was allegedly last seen in Hamilton County, family members have reported that they had not seen her after she returned from that trip to Georgia.
When she was originally reported missing, the alert indicated that Ciera Breland was last seen on February 25, 2022 in the 14400 block of Baldwin Lane, near the intersection of Ditch Road and 146th St. However, family members later said that Ciera was in Johns Creek the week prior to her disappearance, and no one had seen her since she allegedly returned from the peach state.
According to the Johns Creek Police, Ciera’s husband, Xavier Breland Jr., 37, has been named a person of interest in her disappearance, but has not bee charged in connection with the case. He’s been arrested in Hamilton County, Indiana on an unrelated charge connected to Coweta County in Georgia. He’s currently awaiting extradition to Georgia.
In speaking to Ciera’s family, WishTV was able to ascertain that her loved ones were concerned about her relationship with Breland Jr. Ciera moved to Indiana after marrying Breland Jr. “After she moved there, it just all went downhill and stuff started happening and then she disappeared. She wasn’t communicating with everyone like she used to and it was kind of like he was brainwashing her,” said Luke Locklair, Ciera’s cousin.
Anyone with information regarding the disappearance of Ciera Breland is asked to call the Carmel Police Department at 317-571-2580 or Corporal Rozier with the Johns Creek Police Department at 678-372-8046.
