People in this chapter · Barbara · Kessiah and Stephanie Young · Gov. Josh Stein

Banners on Highway 127

The family put up banners along Highway 127 south of Hickory in 2024, with Dee Dee’s photograph and a request for tips. On July 3, 2025, the anniversary of her disappearance, they shared photographs of relatives placing new banners near where she was found, at Highway 127 and South Center Street in Brookford. Early in May 2025 a banner disappeared after about 10 months. The family put up another.

Sources: WSOC, Dave Faherty, July 23, 2024 · WSOC via Yahoo News, July 3, 2025 · NBC News Dateline, Cold Case Spotlight

The league in her name

The One Purpose Parks and Recreation Council, which began as the Ridgeview Recreation Council, named its basketball league after Dee Dee, and to honor Barbara too. The Dee Dee Dawkins Basketball League has been played at the Brown-Penn Recreation Center nearly every year since. WSOC reported in 2026 that a banner honoring her hangs at the recreation center. Every summer, children who were born decades after 1992 play under her name.

Sources: One Purpose Parks and Recreation Council · WSOC, Erika Jackson, July 1, 2026

The governor’s reward

In July 2025 the sheriff’s office and the SBI added Dee Dee’s case to their cold case lists. On October 13, 2025, Gov. Josh Stein announced a state reward of up to $25,000 for information leading to the arrest and conviction of whoever is responsible. “We cannot stop pursuing justice,” the governor said.

Sources: Office of Gov. Josh Stein, Oct. 13, 2025 · NBC News Dateline, Cold Case Spotlight · WSOC, reward announcement

A mother’s first interview

In July 2026, nearly 34 years after she reported her daughter missing, Barbara gave what WBTV described as her first public interview about the case. She said she has received few, if any, updates over the years. She described the anger she felt in 1992 and said she decided to direct it toward answers instead. She vowed to keep asking until the day she is gone.

“I’m going to want some answers up until the day that I am gone.”Barbara Dawkins to WBTV, July 2026

Stephanie Young told Dateline that it is hard to talk about Dee Dee without talking about the failures. Her message to anyone who knows what happened is shorter: it’s now or never. Kessiah Young, who was 16 in 1992, asked the people who know to come forward. Her grandmother was 89 when WSOC interviewed the family in 2024.

Sources: WBTV, Derrion Henderson, July 20, 2026 · NBC News Dateline, Cold Case Spotlight · WSOC, Dave Faherty, July 23, 2024

Unsolved for

What could still solve it

Listen and read more

• NBC News Dateline, Cold Case Spotlight: the most detailed published account, with family photographs
• Hunting 4 Answers: “Missing Evidence, Missing Justice,” Jan. 15, 2026
• Missing in the Carolinas: “Four 1992 Deaths in Burke and Catawba Counties,” replay, March 13, 2026
• WBTV video: the chief’s credibility fight, July 20, 2026
• WSOC: family still searching 34 years later, July 1, 2026
• SBI cold case page, with Dee Dee’s photograph

Other unsolved North Carolina cases in the atlas include the 2009 Mooresville murder of Matt Stewart. For a case in which missing person reports about Black women were slow to draw a response in the early 1990s, read the Charlotte murders and the trial of Henry Louis Wallace.