INSIDE EDITION spoke to a family who faced tragedy twice after two sisters went missing 30 years apart from each other.
They were a picture perfect family. Two adorable sisters, Debbie and Vickie, were just one year apart. They loved wearing matching dresses and riding ponies in their hometown of Aptos, California.
They were devoted to their little sister, Melissa.
But tragedy has now struck not once, but twice. Both sisters have disappeared and astonishingly, they vanished 30 years apart.
Debbie Shelton was 12 when she went for a bike ride in 1969. She never came home. It's a day her mother, Marcia, will never forget.
Marcia told INSIDE EDITION, “All of the emotions just come flooding back. I didn’t even see her before she left the house. That's something you always regret.”
The case made headlines. Debbie's body was found beneath trees, near where she said she would be biking. Police say she was strangled. Her hands bound in masking tape and they believe she was sexually assaulted. Incredibly 30 years later, tragedy would strike this family again when a second sister went missing.
It was 2001, Vickie was 44 when she disappeared from her home in Clearlake, California.
INSIDE EDITION’s Victoria Recano asked Marcia, “Walk me through the moment when you realized, ‘Oh my gosh, this is happening again.”
She said, “It's hard, it's hard. At that point, your figuring this is not going to be a good resolution.”
There were no arrests made in either case and now, Vickie is presumed dead.
There is one sister left, Melissa, the youngest. She was five-years-old when Debbie was killed, and she was 35 years old when Vickie vanished.
Melissa said, “It was devastating. Here I am a grown woman and it was like someone hit me with a two-by-four. I couldn't believe it.”
Now, this mom and her last surviving daughter are on a quest to solve the double mystery that has ripped their family apart.
Recano asked, “Someone out there has information. What do you want to say to them?
Marcia said, “Speak out, now is the time.”
