"Due to the passage of time, we were unable to recover the remains of your daughter," wrote Thomas Corn in an October email to the mother, a copy of which was provided to Inside Edition Digital.
Fatima Nettles was just 21, a new mother and a young soldier, as she blinked in disbelief at the sorrow unfolding before her.
There was a small casket being lowered into the ground. It held her daughter, who had graced her parents' lives for only six months before her body was placed in this coffin, wearing a spotless white dress, a white bonnet on her little head and tiny shoes on her feet.
It was a loss that ripped the mother's heart, and forever marked her life to come. The same burden was borne by the father.
Now, the parents say, their daughter is lost again.
Twenty-two years later, there is nothing left of Jada Kai Hickman at Hillcrest Memorial Park in Augusta, Georgia, her parents say. No casket, no dress, no shoes, no tiny body or skeleton.
Fatima and her ex-husband, Kamaron Hickman, both long-serving members of the military, are disconsolate. They had requested their baby girl's remains be exhumed from the cemetery, so her body could be cremated and the ashes shared by her parents, who no longer live anywhere near what they believed was Jada's final resting place.
"As we discussed with you, we apologize that due to the passage of time, we were unable to recover the remains of your daughter," wrote Thomas Corn in an October email to the mother, a copy of which was provided to Inside Edition Digital.
Corn is the market manager for Dignity Memorial, a subsidiary of Service Corporation International, which also owns Hillcrest Memorial Park.
That email incensed Jada's parents, who remain stunned. "What do you mean, she's not there? Where is she at?" Fatima tells Inside Edition Digital. She is seated in her office at the Pentagon, dressed in an impeccably pressed camouflage uniform. She is a chief warrant officer involved in strategic defense planning.
Kamaron Hickman says he feels like he is 21 again, reliving the gut-wrenching loss of his baby daughter to Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. "It just feels like a scab has been ripped open all over again. It's all open again," he says.
The parents say they haven't heard from any official that October email and have no idea what is going on or if anyone is looking for their daughter's body.
Inside Edition Digital reached out for comment to Corn, sending a detailed list of questions that also included a copy of his email to Fatima. He declined to answer questions and referred the inquiry to a corporate media phone number.
Inside Edition Digital also reached out to Hillcrest general manager Clifton Atwood, sending the same detailed list of questions that included queries about what is being done to find Jada's body and what could have happened to her remains.
Atwood did not respond.
"We have an obligation of privacy to the families we are honored to serve and, as result, we are unable to discuss this matter with the media. While we did not acquire the cemetery until 2006, we have been and remain committed to working closely with the family to find a resolution," a spokeswoman for the cemetery said in a statement sent to Inside Edition Digital.
Texas-based Service Corporation International is the nation's largest owner of cemeteries and provider of death-care services, operating more than 1,500 funeral homes and 400 cemeteries, according to its LinkedIn site.
One of those cemeteries is Hillcrest Memorial Park.
Service Corporation International, a privately owned company, has faced several lawsuits over the years, alleging misconduct and mishandling of loved one's remains, according to court records and media reports.
Service Corporation International has settled several of those lawsuits, including a federal class-action filing in Florida alleging it deceived 87,000 state customers who purchased its prepaid plans.
The company agreed to pay $209 million in refunds to the plaintiffs. “While we strongly maintain there was no wrongdoing, in an effort to move forward and continue our full focus on serving our families, we agreed to settle the remaining disputes," the firm said in a statement.
Hillcrest cemetery in Georgia has received several complaints on public consumer review sites such as Yelp, alleging mishandling of remains, aggressive sales practices and poorly kept gravesites.
Hillcrest managers have responded online to some of those complaints, asking relatives to contact them directly, and pledging to investigate.
Jada's parents say they aren't sure what to do about their daughter's missing body. While they want answers, what they want most are her remains, so they can be near her mother and father.
"Somebody needs to be held accountable for this, because this should not happen," the mother says. After dealing with the cemetery, and being told Jada wasn't there, she says she was at an utter loss. She called her ex-husband.
"I went to Kam, and I'm like, 'I don't know what to do, but we got to do something.' Yes, we accepted the SIDS (diagnosis), but no, we're not going to accept this," she says.
Kamaron posted a video on his Facebook page, showing him at his daughter's gravesite. The footage has gone gone viral on social media sites including TikTok.
"She was buried in clothes. The casket had metal on it. She had on shoes, but they're telling us that she's not here, and they don't have any other answers for us. So they pretty much just closed the conversation," Kamaron says in the video.
"I'm not really sure what else to do. But, like I said, the dad in me will not let this just die," he says. "Again, this is Hillcrest Memorial in Augusta, Georgia. And I want some answers."
The Death of Jada Kai Hickman
In 2000, Fatima and Kamaron Hickman welcomed the birth of their first and only child together on Aug. 21 in Landstuhl, Germany, where the young Army couple was stationed.
Jada was a happy baby, with chubby cheeks, big brown eyes, curly black hair and an infectious giggle.
"We were very young at the time," says Kamaron. "Not only were we young, but we were in the military, and it was a very, very, fast-paced life." The young father was gone a lot on various missions.
He was away from home in March of 2001, when both parents received phone calls. Fatima was reached at work, where she was told there was something wrong with Fatima, who was at an on-base babysitting site.
"So I'm assuming Jada fell, or something like that," Fatima says, recalling that day. Then the babysitter called again, saying Fatima needed to come right now, the mother recounts.
When she arrived at the babysitter's, Jada was already dead. She had passed in her sleep. "The military did a thorough investigation, and said that she passed away from Sudden Infant Death Syndrome," the mother says.
The couple was quickly transferred back to the States. Jada's body followed not long after. The grieving parents were now living in Augusta, and picked Hillcrest as her burial site. The congregants sang "Blessed Assurance," and the funeral was not called a funeral.
Rather, according to the ceremony's program, mourners gathered for "Home Going Services."
Life went on for those left behind. After six years of marriage, the Hickmans divorced. Kamaron left the Army on a medical discharge after 17 years of service. Fatima is a career soldier and has served for 26 years.
Kamaron lives in Jacksonville, Florida. Fatima lives in Washington, D.C. The parents regularly visited Jada's gravesite, but the distance has become difficult.
In August of last year, Fatima began making inquiries about removing Jada's remains. She encountered a lot of red tape and some "push back," she says. Then she reached out the governor's office and the Augusta mayor's office, the latter of which got the ball rolling, she says.
"Next thing I know," forms began arriving authorizing the removal of Jada's body, she says. After the parents completed the paperwork and returned it, digging commenced on Sept. 21, Fatima says.
Later that day, she says, Hillcrest General Manager Clifton Atwood called her at the Pentagon. "He says, 'Well, hey, just want to let you know we've been digging all morning and we were unable unable to recover any remains. We're going to stop right now, and we're going to try again tomorrow,'" the mother recalls.
Fatima remembers being confused, she says. "He said nothing at all was there," she says.
The next day, Fatima says, Atwood called back. "He said, 'There is nothing to be found. There was nothing to recover.' He asked me if I wanted the headstone to go back onto the site," the mother says.
Fatima says she was dumbfounded.
"For what? You are telling me that there's nothing there, and it's possible that nothing was ever there," Fatima says she replied. The mother says she was offered some dirt from the gravesite as a replacement. "And I'm like, 'From a gravesite where you're basically telling my daughter never was in, or isn't in?' I said, 'I don't want that dirt. I want to know where my daughter is. I want something more.'"
After a few days, the mother said she demanded paperwork from Hillcrest saying that Jada's remains couldn't be found. According to her, Atwood said they didn't have any record of the digging work because nothing was recovered.
Fatima said she pushed back, hard, and demanded something in writing. Days later, she says she received the Oct. 4 email from Corn, of Dignity Memorial, another Service Corporation International entity, saying, "We were unable to recover the remains of your daughter."
Radio silence has followed, the parents say.
Kamaron Hickman recently spoke with Patrick Young, a criminal investigator with the Richmond County Sheriff's Office, and reported his daughter's missing body.
"The Sheriff's Office is looking into the situation and cannot comment further at this time," Young replied to an Inside Edition Digital request for comment.
Jada's mother says she only wants what is hers. But she has told the father of her child that she knows this may not come to pass.
"I want my daughter's remains. I would like her to be cremated. And I would like to have her ashes with me. I told Kamaron I have accepted the fact that's probably not going to happen."
That acceptance does not sit well.
"I feel like my daughter was stolen from me twice. And I feel like someone should be held accountable."
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