The town where women vanish

Fears that a serial killer is at work mount as bodies pile up around Ohio creeks.

For years, Chillicothe, Ohio, was known as just another notch on the Rust Belt, afflicted by the same old problems of drugs, poverty and unemployment. If the town ever made national news, it was because a presidential candidate stopped by vowing to fix things, only for those promises to evaporate after election day.

But in the past couple of months, Chillicothe has crept back into headlines for something other than a stump speech. Something much darker. Something evil.

Chillicothe is no longer just another Rust Belt town. Now it's the city where women go missing and wash up dead. In little over a year, at least six women have disappeared from the town of 21,000. Four bodies have been found, most dumped in creeks or streams flowing from the city.

The women have similar stories. Most were hooked on drugs, and many moonlighted as prostitutes to fund their addictions, police say. Some of them even knew one another. The similarities between the victims and the crime scenes has Chillicothe terrified a serial killer is on the loose. Local police, several county sheriffs' offices and state investigators have united to solve the mystery.

Even FBI analysts are assisting with the investigation, busy compiling a profile of a possible serial killer.

"I don't want to come out and say 'yes, we have a serial killer' but it's a small community that we live in ... and the number of females who have come up missing, and then the bodies that we've found, that's quite a bit for our community," Staff Lieutenant Mike Preston of the Ross County Sheriff's Department said.

"The community is starting to get concerned. Everyone just wants answers."

In the absence of answers - and arrests - citizens are getting scared. The fear that a serial killer is stalking prostitutes swirls around the city like the winds off Lake Erie.

"Obviously there has to be something going on," said Jessica Sayre, whose older sister, Tiffany, was the latest victim. Her body was found in a drainage pipe on Sunday after she had been missing for over a month.

The women began disappearing a year ago from Chillicothe, about an hour south of Columbus. Ohio's first capital more than 200 years ago - a title still boasted on city signs - Chillicothe has fallen far.

"We are battling a problem with heroin in our community," Preston said. Prostitution is on the rise as well.

Charlotte Trego was the first to vanish. In her late 20s with wavy brown hair and glasses, the mother of two had fallen on hard times.

"She started taking pain pills and graduated to heroin," according to the Columbus Dispatch. In early 2014, Trego told her mother she was ready to get clean. Her mother found a rehab centre. But then Trego was evicted by her roommate, according to the Chillicothe Gazette. She was last seen on May 3, 2014. It was as if Chillicothe's increasingly dangerous streets simply swallowed her.

That same day, a friend of Trego's, Tameka Lynch, also vanished. Like Trego, Lynch had drug problems.

"She used and she kind of was struggling, especially after she was diagnosed with lupus," Lynch's cousin Chasity Lett told the Huffington Post website. "Once that happened and she lost her place, it kind of triggered the whole drug thing."

Lynch, a 30-year-old mother of three, financed her deepening addiction by selling her body, the Huffington Post reported, citing Chillicothe police and a local prostitute.

Lynch was the first of "Chillicothe's missing women" - as the six have been called - to be found. On May 24, three weeks after her disappearance, a kayaker spotted Lynch's body on a sandbar in Paint Creek outside town. The Ross County coroner's office determined she died of a multiple-drug overdose.

But Lynch was afraid of the water, her mother told the Dispatch. "Somebody needs to pay for this," Angela Robinson said, speculating that her daughter was murdered. "She was already dead when she was put in the water," she told the Huffington Post.

In the year since, four more women have vanished. Three of them have come home in coffins.

On November 3, 2014, six months after Trego and Lynch disappeared, another woman vanished, Wanda Lemons a 37-year-old mother of five. "She just disappeared out of thin air," her daughter Megan Hodges told the Huffington Post. "I just want them to find out what happened to her. I think her disappearance might be related to sex trafficking, but if it were drugs I don't think it would be related."

Two months later, Shasta Himelrick was found dead floating in the Scioto River outside Chillicothe. In December, she gleefully told friends she was "eating for two", according to the Chillicothe Gazette. But on Christmas Day, the pregnant 20-year-old blonde received a text message while visiting her grandmother. Himelrick left, promising to return, but never did.

A Chillicothe service station recorded her ducking inside. Hours later, her abandoned car was found on a bridge south of town. The doors were open, the tank empty, and the battery dead. Himelrick's body was fished from the water eight days later. The coroner ruled the death a suicide but Himelrick's friends are convinced it was murder.

Tiffany Sayre disappeared under similar circumstances. It was around midnight on May 11, and Sayre and friend Jessie Sanford were working at a local motel.

Sanford told the Huffington Post: "She left to run to her grandmother's house and was going to go back to the hotel to meet the same people so she could make some more money. I don't know what happened. I think somebody took her."

Like the other women, Sayre had become involved in drugs and prostitution, say police and family.

Her family put out missing person flyers and held candlelight vigils, but heard nothing. While they were waiting, another woman, Timberly Claytor, 38, was found dead: shot in the head three times and left in a ditch near another creek. (Authorities have named a prime suspect in the killing but have not yet charged him.)

Finally, Sayre became the last victim in the string of deadly disappearances. A couple out for a walk through a nature preserve south of Chillicothe spotted something white at the edge of a drainage pipe running underneath the road. Sayre's naked body had been wrapped in a bedsheet and hidden inside the culvert with a crown of duct tape around her strawberry blonde hair.

Authorities ruled Sayre's death a homicide. The grisly discovery helped launch the task force, which now includes more than a dozen members, including the FBI analysts. The task force is investigating the cases of all six women, even those formerly considered suicides. Reports say the investigation could also expand to at least three other women missing from nearby Portsmouth and Columbus.

A serial killer is a possibility, according to Preston. He said officials were studying the apparent pattern to the dumping of the bodies along waterways outside the city.

"This wasn't just a simple overdose," Jessica Sayre said of her sister's death. The Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation was analysing the forensics found at the scene for traces of a suspect, Preston said. He added that the task force had received more than 100 tips in just a few days.

But as authorities delve into the growing number of deaths and disappearances, some locals say the police are part of the problem.

"The day I reported her missing was very upsetting to me," Trego's mother, Yvonne Boggs, told the Huffington Post. "The cop said, 'Women like your daughter take off because they don't want to be bothered.' It was like they looked into it up to a certain point and then quit looking."

"The police didn't take it serious and just blew me off," Lynch's mother, Angela Robinson, told the same website.

"I feel like Chillicothe has turned for the worst," Jessica Sayre said. "Now they are going to start picking up the pieces, but this town has really gone down with drugs.

"It's been a nightmare for us," she said of Tiffany's death. "Nothing is going to bring her back, but we are going to get justice. And we are going to pray for these other women who are missing in Chillicothe. This town has beauty. This town can come together."