The Disappearance of Niqui McCown
In July of 2001, Niqui McCown was an ambitious 28-year-old, studying criminal justice and working at a correctional facility as the head accountant. Niqui hoped to one day work for the FBI as an agent, or as a Federal Marshall. She was also only weeks away from marrying the love of her life, Bobby Webster.
She had dated Bobby when she was a freshman in high school, but being a few years older than she was, he moved from their hometown of Richmond, Indiana to California. After Bobby left, Niqui ended up in a relationship where she became pregnant with a baby girl who she would name, Peyton. Her relationship with Peyton’s father did not last though and in 1998 when Bobby moved back to Richmond, Indiana, he and Niqui got back together. Soon after, Bobby proposed to Niqui, and she, of course, said yes.
On July 22, 2001, Niqui and Bobby went to church together and then went their separate ways to take care of some final things for the wedding. Their wedding date was set for August 18, 2001, and with it fast approaching, Bobby went to the mall with a cousin I believe, to do a final fitting for the tuxedos for the big day. In the meantime, Niqui was going to bring their laundry to the Richmond Coin Laundromat to tackle the laundry.
Right around noon, Niqui dropped her 9-year-old daughter, Peyton, off at her parents and headed to the laundromat. However, Niqui stopped back over to her parent’s house while waiting for laundry to finish up and told her mom that a few Hispanic men at the laundromat were making her uncomfortable and harassing her while she was there. Niqui’s mom encouraged her to bring the clothes back there to finish up, but she insisted she was sure that she would be fine and had nothing to worry about, maybe she was just being paranoid. Niqui didn’t return home with Peyton that evening and Bobby originally assumed she was still with her parents. When it got to around 6 pm, Bobby started calling around looking for her. One of her sisters (she was one of 9 siblings) expressed she had probably just been out shopping. With a wedding coming up, that seems like a feasible situation. I feel that Peyton spent a lot of time with her grandparents and the fact that Niqui hadn’t picked her up quite yet wasn’t so out of the ordinary. On Investigation Discovery’s “Disappeared,” her mother expresses that it was completely reasonable that maybe Niqui had “jumped in her car and gone over to Ohio because she worked over there.”
When it began to get dark outside, then the worry began to increase. The only thing missing from her apartment was the laundry she had taken with her. Her purse and ID were even still there on her bedside table. On a side note, how many people leave without their ID? This blows my mind because I know I have friends who often go places without it and maybe it’s my own paranoia, but I would want it on me in case I were to be in an accident or I was found dead on the side of the road and maybe the killer left it in my back pocket (totally paranoid, I know), but in all reality, don’t leave without your ID! Take that ish with you even if you’re going around the corner to the gas station and back. You literally never know!!!
With the worry increasing, a few of them decide to drive to Dayton, Ohio (where Niqui works) and see if they spot her car on the side of the road - maybe she broke down or was in an accident - something like that. Still, there’s no sign of Niqui or her vehicle. At this time, her father insists that they file a missing person’s report. Of course, as we all know - the police won’t do anything until she had been missing for longer than less than a day. They literally assumed that Niqui and Bobby must have been fighting or she had cold feet and left of her own volition. You have to wonder if the police had taken them seriously, would they have found her? Her siblings began pounding the pavement looking for her and questioning people on their own. They knocked on doors, passed out fliers, stopped people in the street - they wanted to know where she was. When she didn’t show up for work, the police finally took it seriously.
Police had a helicopter search for her missing vehicle and I have heard two different things here - I have heard that the helicopter only went over Richmond, Indiana, and then I have heard that it went over Dayton, Ohio as well. I’m not sure which is accurate, but either way, they were unable to locate Niqui’s vehicle. So who is always the first person of interest when someone goes missing? Well, of course, they began looking at Bobby Webster, Niqui’s fianceé. The thing with Bobby though, is that he didn’t make it look very good for himself. Bobby called the community college looking to collect her tuition money that wasn’t being used, and is said to have become very frustrated with the person on the phone when she told him that Niqui didn’t have any unused tuition to collect because of her employer was paying her tuition for her. Then to make matters worse, he is reported to have tried to take back the wedding rings she had purchased for him as well as asking for the deposit back for the wedding reception hall. Bobby - she just went missing, how are you already canceling the wedding? According to Investigation Discovery, he never told anyone that it was canceled. He claims that he wanted the deposit back in order to buy a cell phone so that he could be reached at all times with all of the running around they were doing with Niqui being gone. I have to agree with him here - it seems that being accessible would be so super important to me as well. Truly, I want to say I do not believe Bobby was involved in her disappearance. I agree that it doesn't look good for him, but he didn’t have anything to do with it. Why the suspicious behavior? He was freaking out - his fianceé was gone and he was ready to put up any cash he could get a hold of to help find her - and he didn’t have much on his own.
According to the police, he failed the polygraph, but according to Bobby, the question was whether he felt responsible for her disappearance, to which he says he of course does, because he wasn’t able to protect his woman. I feel this is an accurate statement from him. The police are unable to call him a suspect, but only a person of interest. I truly don’t think that he knows anything about her disappearance.
Three months after her disappearance, her car was found abandoned in the parking lot of Meadows of Catalpa apartments in Dayton, Ohio. Her laundry was still folded in the basket in the backseat of her car. That specific apartment complex, her ex-boyfriend (Peyton’s father, I believe) lived there, but he had an alibi that checked out and was ruled out fairly quickly. Another friend of Niqui’s lived nearly one-quarter of a mile away from that complex as well - and he could not be ruled out - co-worker, Tommy Swint. I have seen reports that Niqui and Tommy had an affair together, but according to Niqui’s family, that is just simply not true. It seems that Tommy wanted more from Niqui than Niqui would give him - as she was about to marry the love of her life. According to her sister, Tommy was more of a friend, or “big brother” type, but at the same time, was someone she walked in on allegedly trying to rape Niqui at one point. Six years later, it somehow comes back to the McCown family and Richmond Police, that Swint has been hired as a police officer in Trotwood, Indiana. Once the detectives in Richmond let Trotwood police know that Swint is a person of interest in the murder of Niqui McCown, Trotwood asks him to resign or be fired. Swint resigns and then tries to sue the Richmond police department alleging that he was never informed that he was actually a person of interest in her death. He doesn’t win these lawsuits but does become a little bit of a local celebrity. Because of this newfound celebrity status, an anonymous tip comes in about an unsolved murder from 16-years prior.
The victim, 33-year-old Tina Marie Ivory, was strangled and her body was wrapped in a blanket and dumped in the woods. At the time, they had been able to collect DNA but didn’t have a suspect to put it to. Once this tip came in about Swint, the Dayton police were able to reopen the cold case of Tina Marie Ivory. Richmond police actually had Swint’s DNA and had obtained it during the lawsuit earlier in the year. His cocky ass allowed them to take his DNA as a show of good faith that, “Yea, I’m being cooperative and y’all are the ones who are doing me wrong.” Nope. The DNA matched the crime scene of the murder of Miss Ivory, and not only that, but they were able to lift a palm print from the tape that wrapped the blanket around her body. Now they needed a fingerprint. They were able to obtain that through a traffic stop and even bring him in for an interview where he denied having anything to do with Miss Ivory’s murder. Of course, though, the fingerprint matched the palm print, and thus - an arrest warrant was issued. Niqui McCown’s case could also be close to being solved.
When police approached Tommy Swint’s residence to arrest him, they heard a single gunshot and entered to find Tommy Swint laying dead on the floor with a gun in his hand. He shot himself to avoid going through trial and to prison for what he did to Tina Marie Ivory’s family. That is where Niqui’s case seems to end.
Here’s How I See It
The men at the laundromat were not what was really bothering Niqui. She was bothered because she was going to confront Tommy Swint and was nervous to do so because of how violently he had treated her in the past. He was stalking and harassing her and what she said about the Hispanic men was true, but she didn’t want to worry her parents and tell them what was really going to happen. She wanted Tommy to leave her alone and she planned on letting him know that. I see her parking at the apartment complex to meet Tommy there. It feels as if that was a neutral location to talk to him where she would feel safer because he had become violent with her before and one of her sisters even says that she had walked in on Tommy attempting to rape Niqui. I know there is controversy over whether or not they had an affair or a relationship of any sort, and the consensus seems to be that Tommy had a different view of their relationship than she did. What I feel is that she was generally polite and friendly with Tommy and he misinterpreted that as interest. When she shot him down, he was angry.
In the interest of full disclosure, and if you’ve been here since the beginning, you know that I believe in total transparency - I cannot connect with what Tommy must have said to get Niqui to meet him. I feel that he threatened her daughter in order to convince her to meet him. Niqui was smart - she wouldn’t have gone to meet him willingly unless she felt that she had to.
I will tell you what I do see and that’s her standing outside of her car on the driver’s side talking to him. I almost feel like she knew what was coming, but felt she couldn’t speak up or stop it because of Peyton. I get the sense of, “leave her out of this…” as if he threatened that if she didn’t go along with him that he would kill Peyton or possibly one of her sisters?
I see her ducking into the passenger side, but he’s more or less forcing her in - like he has a gun that he’s threatened her with so she felt she couldn’t leave or he would kill her anyway.
I get the sense of a sexual assault - and I don’t want to go into details either because of course you never know who could listen, but I do believe she was sexually assaulted and I see him strangling her. What’s weird is that I see like a tarp or something laid on a bed and on the floor - like he was being careful that cleanup would be as simple as possible. I believe this was possibly the third time he had done this, but maybe even fourth. I do believe that during his time in the Marine Corps, he had assaulted but not necessarily killed local women when he was overseas. Regardless, I see him pulling her down from the bed onto the tarp on the floor - and it looks like it’s on cold concrete or stone - and he rolls the tarp around her and ties it off. I see twine around her wrists and around the tarp that she’s enclosed in. I don’t believe he rolled her very tightly because as he drags her to the car, I think the tarp loosens up and as he drags her from the car, a hand is exposed.
He drove her maybe three miles down the road to either a park or a wooded area - it doesn't look particularly large - and he dumped her. I honestly cannot believe that she wasn’t found. I’m seeing one of those blue tarps with a silver underside. I’m not sure if it’s swampy or just muddy as if it had recently rained or it rained not long after he dumped her body there. It really is remarkable that she wasn’t found.
That being said, I do not believe that they really truly dedicated the time and resources to finding her that they say that they did. It feels as if many things were glossed over and truly Tommy could have been apprehended much sooner than he was. They could have found her. I almost feel like he moved her body or something after they looked into him. That’s why she isn’t there anymore and took her farther into the hills and mountains of Ohio where she wouldn’t be found and truly I don’t believe she will be.
Listen, over 600,000 people go missing in the United States every single year. If someone is making you feel uncomfortable or unsafe - do not be polite - and for the love of God - always tell someone where you’re going - especially if they tell you not to.
Stay safe and aware. If you know anything that could be of interest, even if you think it wouldn’t be of interest, but know any small details at all about the disappearance of Niqui McCown, please report it to the Richmond, Indiana police department. I will have phone numbers and links provided in the show notes and on Patreon as usual.
Love & Light my friends.
Sources:
Investigation Discovery’s “Disappeared - Season Two - The Vanishing Bride”
