An Alabama family is searching for a young woman who went missing after traveling to Germany in 2018 with a man she’d been speaking to online.
Nicole Denise Jackson, 24, left Alabama in 2018 to meet up with a man she had met online. She reportedly communicated with family members initially, although no one can confirm for sure that they’ve heard from her in about two years, since 2019. Just when the family started to put plans together to find Jackson, their efforts were derailed by the pandemic.
“At the end of 2019, we were trying to make decisions on what we were going to do, and then the pandemic happened,’’ Jackson’s sister Ela Vaughn told AL.com. Vaughn said she last received a text from her missing younger sister in 2019, and hasn’t heard her voice since Christmas 2018. Jackson’s Instagram account was also deleted in 2018, which is unlike her, Vaughn said.
Vaughn has been in contact with the U.S. Consulate in Munich and filed a missing person report. Officials have an address for Jackson but have not been able to get in contact with her. When they went to the address on file, no one lived there.
“We have attempted communication with Ms. Jackson via the contact information we have available from state department records but have not been able to reach her thus far. Per previous recommendations, we strongly advise you to contact the German authorities directly to file a missing person’s reports or obtain information on your sister’s whereabouts,” officials told AL.com.
Jackson was 21 when she left, and had graduated from Pleasant Grove High School in 2015 before leaving the country in late 2018. Her family has little information about the man wirh whom she traveled. Vaughn said she only recently found out that the man Jackson traveled with was someone she met online.
“I just found a few months ago they met online,’’ Vaughn said. “I thought it was somebody she went to school with.”
Jackson was also going to Germany to pursue a musical career and told family she was going to school there because it was free.
As recent as July and August 2020, family members have received occasional messages from Jackson’s number, including “Happy Birthday” messages that provided a false sense of security. But when family members tried to call the number back it would not connect.
Vaughn, a travel nurse, spent the past year working out of state amid the pandemic, and the family was not able to travel overseas due to COVID-19 restrictions. “I get back and I’m like, ‘Where’s my sister?’ Something’s not right,” she said. Now that the restrictions have been lifted, the family is planning to find out where Jackson is.
Vaughn said she’s not sure if Jackson is dead or alive and expressed concern that human trafficking may be involved in her sister’s disappearance, which she said would make it difficult to find her. “I might not ever find her, but I just know she wouldn’t be off the grid like this,” she said.
Vaughn and her father have had their passports expedited and plan to travel to Munich, Germany, in the coming weeks, upon final clearance. The family has set up a GoFundMe page to cover travel expenses and raised $1,500 of a $20,000 goal.
“I just want everybody help. She’s an Alabama native. We’ve got to stick together,” Vaughn told WBRC.
