EVANSDALE, Iowa - (Iowa's News Now) — Next month, Evansdale will mark the ten-year anniversary of one of the community's collective nightmares: the disappearance of Lyric Cook, 10, and her cousin Elizabeth Collins, 8.
"We've never stopped, from day one," says Detective Jason Ellison with the Bremer County Sheriff's Office.
Day one was July 13, 2012. Lyric and Elizabeth were last spotted riding bikes near Meyers Lake in Evansdale. Despite massive search efforts, including draining the lake, the girls weren't found until December 5. Hunters in Bremer County's Seven Bridges Wildlife Park reported two bodies that were later positively identified as the girls.
Nearly a decade later, things look different. Meyers Lake is now home to Angel's Park, where the cousins and other lost loved ones are remembered. There are also new faces in the investigation; Detective Ellison joined in 2017.
"At this point we have right around 2,000 leads, tips and leads, since the case started," he says. "About 500 of those have been since I was involved with the investigation."
Iowa DCI Special Agent Scott Reger took over as the lead agent in 2017.
"I don't consider it a cold case because it's not sitting on a shelf, because it's being actively investigated," Agent Reger says. "But I probably wouldn't call it a cold case regardless because they're not cold until they're totally done, until we've found the person who did it."
"We're gonna not stop until we get answers," says Drew Collins, Elizabeth's father.
When asked if that moment feels closer now, Collins doesn't hesitate.
"Absolutely," he says.
For Collins, the 10-year anniversary isn't as important as another day in the unknown future when they can start marking the anniversary of case closed.
"it's just another day," he says of next month's decade marker. "Still plowing forward until we get it, that day comes."
He's used the last decade to raise awareness, just weeks ago launching a foundation to help families of missing people.
"We want to help raise money for some of those cases to get the reward money up," he says. "The other thing is the sex offender registry, when those people come up missing we want to be able to help locate those people and get them back to checking in like they're supposed to."
Investigators say though they're checking off one decade since the girls were abducted, time is on their side.
"It's an exciting time in law enforcement, especially with these long-term cases," Detective Ellison says.
Advances in technology, like genetic genealogy that's solved other Iowa cases, are providing investigators more hope.
"We've actually had different private labs or we've had other new technology people, they're aware of this case as well, even on a national level and so they've actually reached out to us and said hey this is what we have available, can you guys apply it to your situation?" Agent Reger says.
Collins feels it too. That there's not long to wait.
"Time is not on [the side of whoever did this]. Their time is running out," Collins says. "Every day that passes is a day closer to us catching them."
"Yep, yep," Agent Reger nods. "We're going to hit the rock over and over and over and over and over again until it breaks. That's the analogy we use, we're going to keep hitting it and we're not the only ones hitting it. The public participates by providing information, they're helping us break the rock."
You can submit information about the case, no matter how small the detail, at [email protected]
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