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The original was posted on /r/unresolvedmysteries by /u/AlfredTheJones on 2023-12-31 17:42:16+00:00.
Hello everyone! Happy new year! Thank you for your upvotes and comments on my last post about April Bailey- I hope that she will be found soon and that her family will get some closure.
Today I wanted to write about a disappearance of a woman who never arrived to her destination and hasn't been seen again.
BACKGROUND
Monique Katrina Boamah was 33 years old when she went missing from Fort Wayne in Indiana, USA. She was born in NY and grew up in Yonkers.
At the time of her disappearance, Monique was unemployed and was collecting unemployment benefits. She wanted to start school, Lehman college, in fall of 2021 and become a lawyer. Her family called the school after she disappearaed to ask if she was enrolled, but they said they couldn't share that information.
Monique was deeply religious and was "always quoting the Bible". She was a christian, and her sister (who I'll call V in the rest of the writeup) thought that she was pentecostal.
V suspects that Monique might have an undiagnosed mental illness. In her own words: "(Monique) makes hasty and rash choices with no real clear plans or thoughts of consequences".
DISAPPEARANCE
Monique has been living with her childhood friend in Fort Wayne for a month before she went missing. Both of them grew up in Yonkers, after which the friend moved to Indiana. She didn't have a permanent residence: She lived with V, then she rented a place, then she went to California and then finally she moved to Indiana to live with her friend.
She was driven by said friend to the Fort Wayne International Airport on the 13th of April. She was posibly going to Washington DC, but that couldn't been verified. It's not even clear if she actually boarded a plane, and her travel information is also unknown- but she has made it to the DMV area. She was travelling alone.
According to V, the last time Monique was in contact with anyone was the 6th of June, when she sent their other sister a happy birthday message. V called all of Monique's friends and nobody has heard from her after May.
V talked to her (Monique's) friend, the one from Indiana, who once again said that Monique allegedly wanted to travel to Washington DC. During that conversation, another friend said that Monique sent her a message with the photo of a place she was staying. After googling, it turned out that the place in the photo was located in Northern Virginia, likely Arlington or Alexandria; Monique was staying at an extended stay hotel to go to a church she often watched online.
V said that the family filed a missing person's report in Yonkers, where Monique grew up. She said that the police refused to ping Monique's phone because it's "still on"- it would ring but either nobody would pick up, or it would go straight to voicemail. Monique wouldn't call, text or reply to anyone else's texts.
Her family actually contacted a private investigator, but they couldn't find anything about Monique. They were looking for Monique's social security number to give to the investigator to hopefully find anything useful, but it's unclear if they've actually found it or if anything came out of it.
Monique hasn't been in contact with anyone, and she doesn't have any social media that her family knew about.
CONCLUSION
I think that it wouldn't be a stretch to say that Monique was a vulnerable person- she didn't have a permanent adress according to V, she was living on unemployment checks and she was possibly exhibiting signs of mental illness. It's very easy to take advantage of someone like that, and I think that it's very possible that Monique could've been harmed or manipulated.
Her family suspects that Monique might've become a victim of a cult. She was deeply religious and not in the right state of mind, not to mention away from her family or stable living conditions, a prime target for a cult. Another piece of evidence is that Monique's phone seems to be on, it's just that she (or someone who has her phone) isn't responding. Perhaps contacting her family and friends is forbidden? They have their suspicions about the church she went to in Northern Virginia, but they weren't able to locate it.
Of course there's also a chance that Monique was murdered or died and hasn't been found/identified. Again, she was very vulnerable, so a prime target for someone who would want to kill somebody. She could've also gotten confused or lost, maybe had a medical episode and perished.
Another possibility is that she has vanished voluntarily. She had a very transient lifestyle so it would be easy for her to disappear if she wanted to, not to mention no job, no close family like a partner or children, no social media, so it wouldn't be impossible for her to drop off the radar. V and Monique's friend say that she wouldn't stay out of contact for so long, so do with that what you will.
It's strange that there doesn't seem to be any organized search for Monique; Her family seems to be looking for her on their own terms, but there's no articles in media, nothing. There's just a flyer, a NamUS profile, a websleuths thread and a short article on ourblackgirls.com, a database for missing and murdered Black women. The lack of interest from the police is appalling, and their reasons to not ping Monique's phone is absurd.
Someone who claimed to be Monique's close friend (though they were vetted by V) said that their other mutual friend swore that he saw Monique in Harlem, New York at a restaurant bar called Corner Social a few months before March 2022, but he was in a hurry so he couldn't say hi and make sure it was her. This sounds far from reliable, but I figured that I'll put it here just so everything's included. Said friend said that she was in contact with Monique around May 2021, but that might as well mean April, before Monique went missing.
Monique Katrina Boamah was 33 when she went missing and would be about 36 now. She was a Black woman, 5' 3" (63 inch / 160 cm) and 150 pounds (68 kg). She had black hair and brown eyes, and both ears pierced- it's unknown what she was last seen wearing. If you have any info about her disappearance, contact Fort Wayne Police Department at (260) 427-1201 (case number 21F116864).
SOURCES
Monique's websleuths.com thread