For Angie and Tony Hawkins, the past two years since daughter Lindsay vanished without a trace have been brutal.
They will never stop trying to uncover the truth and bring Lindsay home.
Lindsay Gale Hawkins was last seen at her boyfriend’s house in Ottawa, WV on May 18, 2021, when a suspicious fire broke out at the house. The 33-year-old has not been seen or heard from since.
Somebody knows something, says Angie… of the small West Virginia town where Lindsay went missing.
“That is a very large family too. I realize people tend to protect their family but they know where my daughter is — the two people that seen her last,” she said. “They know what happened; they’ve talked to someone, they’ve told somebody what happened that night. They went to awful great lengths to cover up something.”
By December 2021 the Hawkins said they realized local detachments were not going to assist them. So they contacted the FBI, who reached out to local law enforcement (Boone County Sheriff’s Office).
Tony’s dad and Angie’s parents recently passed, and on their deathbeds asked what happened to their granddaughter.
“This is murder,” said Angie. “They have done something to her. She would have been here. She would have called us, she wouldn’t have done this.”
When the state police task force went to excavate the house they found it had been moved, which Angie calls an attempt to cover it up.
“Receded and apparently while it was still smoldering. So, as you can imagine — didn’t leave a whole lot of evidence behind,” she said. “What was found was sent to the FBI center in Quantico.”
Angie says she felt like most law enforcement profiled Lindsay and decided they had little interest in investigating her disappearance. The state police, on the other hand, acknowledged not only that she was the Hawkins’ daughter but also a human being.
“Done multiple interviews and discovered that at the time of the fire, the county sheriff’s department never investigated the case, never went to the homes that had cameras that could have provided evidence that Lindsay was in the home and who was with her at the time of the fire,” said Angie. “They didn’t even ask those people. Outside of the state police and the FBI, there’s been nothing. They did not do their job. They went to great lengths to cover up the fact that they did not do their job. The reports that they have finally started turning in are half par at best.”
According to Lindsay’s mom, as Christians everybody pays for their sins, whether on this side or the other. And putting the guilty party (or parties) in a cell where they’re going to get three square meals a day and TV doesn’t sound like punishment to her.
“I want my kid back and if she’s gone I want her to have a Christian burial and I want her family and friends to be able to come and pay their respects and tell their stories,” Angie said. “But this never-ending nightmare is not fair to us, it’s not fair to Lindsay, it’s not fair to everybody who ever cared about her.”
What would you be willing to do to bring your kid home, ’cause Angie says ‘They’ve done it.’
“Went out there at night in very scary places and talked to people we would have never imagined. My son has had a gun pulled on him three times trying to get information about his sister and he won’t stop, we won’t stop,” she said.
“But they’re not gonna cover it up for long; everything comes to light eventually. It’s the end game for us — to bring her home and I don’t know what life looks like after that, having to face the fact that she’s not coming back.”
