In 2016, A California Mother Strangely Disappeared Not Long After Moving Into A New Home With Her Boyfriend, And Her Daughter Is Continuing The Hunt For Answers
A lot of the time, you hear stories of parents who tragically have to contact the police to report their children missing. But in some cases, it’s the other way around.
In 2016, Nicole Santos-Hamann had to report her mother, Stacey Smart, missing after not hearing from her not long after she had moved into a new home with her boyfriend. Tragically, she hasn’t seen or heard from her since.
The year she went missing, Stacey Smart was a 52-year-old mother who had just moved from Weaverville, California, into a new home in the nearby town of Lewiston. She had moved to live with her boyfriend, Tony Brand.
According to Stacey’s family, things had been seemingly going well for the couple at the time. However, in mid-October of that year, her children stopped hearing from her.
Stacey’s family, especially her eldest daughter, Nicole, had struggled to get a hold of her for weeks. At one point, Stacey’s family drove to her new home to try to see her in person, but she wasn’t there. They left a note on her door, asking her to contact them, but she didn’t.
No one from Stacey’s family could allegedly get ahold of her boyfriend, Tony, either.
Nicole decided to call the police and report Stacey as missing on November 2nd, 2016.
When police began searching for Stacey, they struggled with a lack of evidence as to what could’ve happened to her. Tony reportedly told police he thought Stacey had left him, so he wasn’t very worried about what happened to her.
Tony’s story about what happened between him and Stacey before she disappeared changed several times as time passed. Eventually, he claimed that Stacey had left him before she was reported missing because she found out he was unfaithful.
GoFundMe – pictured above is Stacey
When Tony let Stacey’s family search their house, they found that all her belongings were still inside, raising their suspicions. Around this time, police discovered that the last time her bank card had been used was on October 16th.
Due to a lack of evidence, Tony has not been arrested for Stacey’s disappearance.
On the same day Stacey was reported missing, another woman, Sherri Papini, was reported missing as well, leading police to believe their cases may have been linked together. However, Sherri returned home by Thanksgiving Day that year and was found to have faked her own kidnapping, making it clear that her story was not related to Stacey’s.
Since Stacey disappeared, her family has hired private investigators and private search and rescue teams in an effort to find her, alongside the work being done by local authorities. Not long after she went missing, Nicole set up a GoFundMe page to raise donations to help pay for the cost of these private investigators and search teams and a reward that will go to anyone with solid information on her case.
“We will not quit searching for my Mom until we get answers,” Nicole wrote on the GoFundMe page.
“We need continued support from the community for search expenses, private investigator, and reward money for information leading us to my Mom.”
At the time of Stacey’s disappearance, she was five foot eight, weighed 180 pounds, and had blonde hair and blue eyes. She also had a tattoo of a red lotus bloom on her lower back and would have been 59 years old today.
If you have any information regarding her case, you are urged to contact the Trinity County Sheriff’s Department at (530) 623-3740.
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