DRew Collins says his 8-year-old daughter Elizabeth and his niece Lyric Cook-Morrissey, 10, were like any other girl their age in the Midwest.
They enjoyed spending time outdoors, singing and dressing up, and often choreographed dance routines together to show off their neighbors.
“They were like sisters,” Collins said The Independent.
But unlike most other little girls in the sleepy town of Evansdale, Iowa, Elizabeth and Lyric were never able to grow up.
One summer afternoon in 2012, the cousins went for a bike ride together near a lake in the northeast of the city.
Then the girls disappeared.
All that remained were their bicycles and Collins' handbag with her cell phone in it, which had been thrown over a fence.
Months of worry led to one parent's worst nightmare: Their bodies were found by hunters 20 miles from where they were last seen playing together.
More than a decade later, the cousins' deaths remain a mystery and are being treated as a double homicide. Collins said he couldn't escape the summer of 2012.
Despite joint efforts by local and federal law enforcement, the victims' families, and the residents of Evansdale, the killer was never found.
Now her case is being examined in a new three-part Netflix documentaryIn summary: Who killed Lyric and Elizabeth?
The aim of Dylan Sires' series was to achieve something that the authorities have not yet managed to do: find the little girl's murderer.
“It’s a trap”
Evansdale was home to about 4,000 people, where community was at the heart of things. Still, Collins said he would never let his 8-year-old go on a bike ride without an adult.
Elizabeth and Lyric were dropped off at their grandmother Wylma Collins' home in downtown Evansdale on the morning of July 13, 2012, to watch them while their parents – Collins is a busy tree surgeon – were at work.
The grandmother, who had a rather laissez-faire approach to parenting, let the girls go on their bikes. At around 12:15 p.m. they set off on their bikes after their grandmother told them to be home “soon.”
After an hour the girls were still not home.
The cousins were last seen alive between 12:30 and 1 p.m. on Gilbert Drive next to Meyers Lake – a popular fishing lake. The lake was about five feet deep and full of algae, Collins recalled.
Almost three hours had passed and Wylma alerted her daughter Heather, who rushed home from work and eventually called the police.
The Father's Sorrow
Collins, Elizabeth's father, had just returned home from work when his wife Heather told him the girls were missing.
“They were gone, vanished into thin air,” Collins said.
During their search, authorities and the family found the bikes and Collins' cell phone in her purse at the southeast corner of the lake. The area was surrounded by 8-foot-high fences; Elizabeth's purse was scattered on one of them.
“When we found the purse over the fence, I got really nervous,” Collins said.
As the days went by, hordes of local volunteers flocked to help the family and police search for the two little girls.
The sheriff's office joined the search on Saturday, followed shortly thereafter by the FBI and criminal investigation departments.
Police drained Meyers Lake while the FBI sent divers into some of its deeper underwater areas.
Candlelight vigils and press conferences were held, but there was still no sign of Elizabeth and Lyric.
Collins was stuck in a nightmare but still had to earn a living.
“I just kept going until I collapsed, and then I would completely drop, collapse, cry or whatever I needed to do, scream, and then I would get back up and keep going until I collapsed again,” he said.
Unsolved case
After five nerve-wracking months, the phone rang.
It was December 5, 2012, and the Minister for Family Affairs asked Collins to come to City Hall because there had been a crucial breakthrough in the case of the missing girls.
Two dead girls were found more than 32 kilometers away.
A day later, Chief Deputy Rick Abben of the Black Hawk County Sheriff's Office confirmed that the bodies were those of Elizabeth and Lyric.
“It's heartbreaking. On the one hand, you're relieved because they've been found and you don't have to worry anymore. But then you feel guilty,” he said.
Then Collins collapsed.
“You feel guilty because you just felt relief knowing where they were, but they're dead. And you think, 'How can I feel relief if they're gone?'” he said.
“This is really getting to you, man.”
“It won’t go away”
Collins still cannot understand how it could be that “nobody saw anything” in the middle of the day on a Friday.
By 2017, authorities had interviewed over 1,000 people and investigated over 300 sex offenders.
Twelve years have passed since the girls were murdered, but that only means over 4,000 days that Collins was grieving and trapped in purgatory.
“It's completely absorbing,” he said. “It doesn't go away. You're stuck in 2012, wondering what happened to your children.”
“What were your final moments? What did you do to my daughter?”
Collins knows the killer is still at large. He believes he is probably still living right under his nose in Evandale.
“If you’re not from the area,” the father said, “you wouldn’t even know” that the cordoned-off area where the girls’ bikes were found existed.
Although the father is heartbroken, he has never lost faith that the murderer will be brought to justice.
Collins hopes the Netflix documentary might encourage anyone with knowledge to come forward.
“They may even think they got away with it. And you know, I'm not going anywhere. I know the police aren't going anywhere,” he said.
The murderer's discomfort comforts him, knowing that any day could be the day the police knock on their door.
“This is the hell they live in,” he added. “One day the day will come when the police will knock on their door.”
Family members and friends of Elizabeth and Lyrics founded the Elizabeth Collins Foundation: a charity that provides financial support to solve unsolved missing persons cases.
