“I remember it like it was yesterday,” Crystal Garcia told Dateline. It was February 1994. She was 6 years old, and her older sister, Stephanie, was 10. They were living with their mother, Nancy, in Houston, Mississippi. Their father, 35-year-old Frank Garcia, who lived nearby, was missing.
Crystal said their mother sat them down on a Wednesday night. “She actually kept us home from church that night because she didn’t want us to, you know, find out, you know, from somebody else,” Crystal said. It didn’t really sink in until the following weekend. “The reality of it hit whenever he never showed up for his visitation,” Crystal told Dateline.
Even though she was only 6 at the time, Crystal remembers her father was committed to seeing her and her sister every other weekend. “He never missed one,” Crystal said. “He was a very active parent in our lives. I mean, just an all-around good person.”
“He loved to play softball,” Crystal recalled. “He did coach my sister and some of her softball leagues and we actually went and watched him play softball.”
One of her last memories of her father was towards the beginning of that February in 1994. “I had found my Easter basket that was put up,” Crystal told Dateline. “I had to have my Easter basket and my Easter egg hunt.”
So despite being about a month too soon for an Easter celebration, Frank gave in to his daughter. “We went to the Indian Mountains by Davis Lake so we could go and hunt Easter eggs,” Crystal said.
Crystal had no idea that she would soon be spending the actual Easter Sunday without her father.
Dateline spoke with Chickasaw County Sheriff’s Department investigator Terry Ward. “The date he was last seen would be February 16, 1994,” Det. Ward told Dateline. “He was reported missing on February 22, 1994.”
Detective Ward confirmed that Frank’s sister, who lived in Alabama, reported him missing.
“He failed to pick up two of his checks from his place of employment,” Crystal told Dateline. “And, you know, nobody had heard from him.”
Frank had remarried, to a woman named Ginger, after his marriage to Crystal and Stephanie's mother ended. Crystal said that Ginger told police two different stories. “One story was he left with two garbage bags full of clothes, a 19” screen TV, and a box of important papers,” Crystal said. “The second story was she left to get her daughter from church and when she returned, he was gone.”
Detective Ward confirmed that authorities spoke with Ginger. “His wife at the time -- Ginger and he were, I guess you'd say separating or whatever,” Detective Ward said. “She would be the last person that we know of to see him.”
The detective said the only story they have on file is about Frank leaving with the two garbage bags, the TV, and the box of papers. None of those items has ever been found. “There's nothing– nothing in the file that they ever located anything like that,” Detective Ward said.
Detective Ward told Dateline the report also didn’t list anything about what Frank was last seen wearing, but Crystal told Dateline that she believes her father was last seen wearing a ball cap, blue jeans, and a t-shirt. He has two tattoos, one arm says ‘Nancy,’ and the other says ‘Ginger.’ Crystal told Dateline that “he was around 5’5”, 150 pounds. Hispanic male with black hair and dark brown eyes.” Frank would be 63 years old today.
When asked about the searches conducted for Frank, Det. Ward said, “I'm sure they, you know, done some form of looking for him.”
But Crystal thinks that the search for her father was severely lacking. “It's rural. It's a small town,” Crystal told Dateline. “We have like four red lights. Everybody knows everybody.”
Detective Ward told Dateline that they have conducted many interviews over the years. “I mean they talked to a lot of people, but no one saw him after February 16, 1994 – that they were able to find,” he said. “They were all just dead ends.”
When asked if foul play was suspected in Frank’s disappearance, Detective Ward told Dateline, “I don't want to say it was suspected, you know, at the time.”
But as time went on, Detective Ward said, “You would tend to want to think that… You know, we talk about a lot of years later, he hadn't, you know, been found or anything, so we kind of would, again, have to think that.”
As far as having any actual evidence of foul play, “I don't see any evidence, you know, in the file,” the detective explained.
There was one time in August 2004, a decade after Frank disappeared, that Crystal’s family thought there might be a big break in the case. “A local here,” Crystal alleged, “actually wrote a confession of murder.”
Crystal told Dateline that the police searched the person’s house for two days until the family of the man said he had made it all up. And the man himself said he had made it up. “So they called off the search,” Crystal said. “And then nothing – nothing else happened. Nothing else happened.”
When asked about the reported confession, Det. Ward told Dateline, “I don't want to really get into that. It's still an open investigation.”
More than decade after that, in 2016, Crystal said that a cold case worker came to swab her and her sister for DNA to enter Frank’s case into NamUs.
Crystal told Dateline that the caseworker told her, “‘You wouldn’t believe the number of unidentified bodies in Mississippi that we do have and this is how we compare DNA,’ he said. ‘So if he’s not in the system, we can’t compare anything.’”
Crystal said nothing has yet come from their DNA being entered into the system.
Crystal feels strongly that for the past 28 years, her father’s story has been silenced, and she is determined to find answers, and ultimately, her father. “We don't have a lot, so I just try to work with what I have,” Crystal told Dateline. “Damn a sentence. Just give us our daddy.”
Detective Ward said that even after 28 years, Frank’s case is still open. “It's still active today. It sure is,” he told Dateline. “If we hear something or something comes along, we -- we do check on it.”
If you have any information that can help find Frank Garcia, please contact the Chickasaw County Sheriff’s Department at 662-456-2339.
