Phoenix Coldon

Case background and investigation

Phoenix Coldon was 23 and a student at the University of Missouri-St. Louis when she disappeared on Sunday, December 18, 2011. According to the Missouri State Highway Patrol's missing-person bulletin, she was last seen leaving the driveway of her family's home in Spanish Lake, in north St. Louis County, driving a black four-door 1998 Chevrolet Blazer. The bulletin lists her date of birth as May 23, 1988, and classes her as an endangered missing person.

Her parents, Lawrence and Goldia Coldon, told the university's news site, UMSL Daily, that they last saw her at about 3 p.m. as she backed out of the driveway. Oxygen, which produced a documentary on the case, reported that she had attended church with her mother that morning, and that a witness account put her departure later, between 4:30 and 4:45 p.m. Her parents reported her missing to the St. Louis County Police Department the next day, according to UMSL Daily.

The Blazer was found the same evening in East St. Louis, Illinois, roughly a 25 to 30 minute drive away. Oxygen reported that a caller told police about an abandoned vehicle at 5:27 p.m., that an officer arrived at 5:42 p.m., and that the vehicle was standing in a traffic lane on St. Clair Avenue. HuffPost reported that it was at Ninth Street and St. Clair Avenue with the keys in the ignition, the engine running and the driver's door open. East St. Louis police had it towed as an abandoned vehicle after establishing that it had not been reported stolen.

The family was not told. According to UMSL Daily and HuffPost, they learned on January 1, 2012, that the vehicle had been in an impound lot since the day she vanished; Oxygen reported that a family friend located it. Wikipedia's summary of the case says her glasses, purse, shoes and identification were found in the vehicle when the family examined it. Oxygen reported that testing found no DNA in the vehicle other than that of family members.

UMSL Daily reported that the Major Case Squad was brought in about five days after the missing-person report. The Coldons also searched on their own and raised money for a private investigator. HuffPost reported in May 2012 that the family had used up their savings and that their home had gone into foreclosure, and quoted her mother saying that police were not actively looking for her daughter.

NBC News profiled the case in December 2014, quoting her father on the unexplained hours between her departure and the discovery of the vehicle. Oxygen broadcast a two-part documentary, The Disappearance of Phoenix Coldon, in November 2018. No arrest has been made, no one has been publicly named as a suspect, and no source found in this review reports any trace of her since 2011. The St. Louis County Police Department remains the investigating agency.