The views and opinions expressed in Cold and Missing are exclusively those of the hosts.
All parties mentioned are considered innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.
Cold and Missing also contains adult themes and languages.
Listener discretion is advised.
I'm your host, Ali McLaughlin-Sulkowski.
And I'm your co-host, Eli Sulkowski.
And this is Cold and Missing, where we cover cold cases and missing person cases.
Hello everyone and welcome back to Cold and Missing.
I'm Ali and it will just be me coming to you this week.
Full disclosure, I was really late with my research this week.
I went kind of down to the wire and then our neighbors were having a bit of a porch party
in this really nice weather.
So I am recording this very late at night and Eli has to work tomorrow so it is just
me.
Today we're back on our regular program.
We had a two-parter last week and the feedback so far is that you guys seem to enjoy the
two-part and kind of getting more in-depth.
So hopefully we'll be able to do that with some more cases coming up.
But today will just be a one-part episode.
We are covering a missing person and just as a bit of a content warning at the top,
this case does involve a young person and there are brief mentions of domestic assault.
Today we are talking about the missing person case of D’wan Sims and this takes place in
December 1994 in Livonia, Michigan.
But first a little bit about D’wan.
D’wan is four years old in 1994.
He is a sweet little boy with a big radiant gap-toothed smile.
Neighbors, family, and friends of D’Wan always said that he was a polite child and was often
with his mother, D’Wanna.
By all accounts, D’wan is a happy child and D’Wanna is an involved and kind mother.
D’Wanna and D’Wan had recently moved into a new home in Detroit, but quite quickly the
neighbors became accustomed to seeing the pair out and about in the neighborhood.
So as we move into the timeline, there are a few different versions of the timing of
the events.
So I'm going to start off with the timeline that D’Wanna initially tells police.
On Sunday, December 11, 1994, D’Wanna had spent the previous Saturday night out with
friends and D’wan had stayed with a family friend.
When D’Wanna woke up around 10 a.m., she gathered up some dirty laundry, put it in her car,
and set off to go pick up D’wan.
After she got D’wan, she headed to the grocery store to pick up some yogurt and plastic spoons
before heading to the laundromat.
Yogurt was one of D’wan’s favorite treats.
She arrives at the laundromat around 1 p.m.
She'll later tell investigators that she stayed around an hour.
She used five washers and bought a large bottle of detergent.
After the laundromat, she swings by her nearby mother's house to borrow a vacuum cleaner.
She then heads to the Wonderland Mall to do some Christmas shopping.
In the parking lot, D’Wanna will later admit that she scooped in and took a parking spot
from someone else who had been waiting for it.
By the time they get to the mall and park, it's right around 2 p.m.
D’Wanna and D’wan entered the mall through the Target entrance.
D’wanna says that she stayed inside the Target for about 45 minutes before leaving to go
to the rest of the mall.
From the inside of the Target, they had an interior entrance to the rest of the mall.
To get to the rest of the mall, you had to walk through a walkway, essentially a very
wide hallway.
It was only 144 feet to the main mall concourse.
There were a few stores in the hallway, including a KayBee's Toys, where D’wan stopped to stare
at the Power Rangers in the window display.
However, in the blink of an eye, D’wan is gone.
D’Wanna turns back around, and he is not there anymore.
D’Wanna starts to search for D’wan.
She thinks he had just wandered off.
This is the Christmas season, and if you'll remember malls in the 90s, they were packed
at this time.
With no online shopping, this was really one of the only places where you could get a lot
of Christmas shopping done at once.
D’Wanna searches, and she isn't finding D’wan.
At around 4 p.m., she asks the security guards to help.
D’wanna would have been missing for about an hour at this point.
As security guards fail to find him, they call police who come to help assist in the
search.
D’Wanna even goes to get her mother, who is working at a shoe store in the mall, to help
look for D’wan.
As police arrive, they begin combing through the mall, but as minutes tick by, more and
more police are summoned to help in the search until the mall closes.
Police pull the surveillance footage from Target to see if they can see D’wan’s movements.
They quickly pull tapes from the mall and different stores that day as well.
During a quick viewing, police are unable to find D’Wanna or D’wan on the security footage,
but they'll need to review it more closely later.
In the meantime, police search dumpsters and the parking lot for any sign of the little
boy.
Immediately, police begin to question D’Wanna since her story isn't lining up with the
security footage.
Police ask if they can search D’Wanna’s home and the car that same night, and she does
not hesitate and lets them.
The search lasts into early Monday morning, but police are very tight-lipped with what
they find during the search.
Later that Monday, December 12th, police will give D’Wanna a polygraph test.
They tell her that she fails, but they'll give her another shot the next day.
Police continue to search the mall and surrounding area for any sign of Dewan, but nothing is
turning up.
Meanwhile, investigators continue to go through the surveillance footage from the mall that
day.
On Tuesday, December 13th, this is the second day of D’wans disappearance, and they give
D’Wanna another polygraph test.
It is reported that she also failed this one.
But it's also reported that she walked out of the police station during their questioning.
She told a local paper, quote, They have been questioning me for 18 hours.
I feel that I have given them sufficient amount of information that they need.
Once I got tired of the questioning, I got up and left."
End quote.
She also told a local news station, quote, They drove me through a park today and told
me to show them where the body is at.
These are the types of things I've been subjected to.
End quote.
Neighbors and families stand behind D’Wanna and do not believe that she had anything to
do with D’wan’s disappearance.
A neighbor from the neighborhood that D’Wanna grew up in says, quote, I don't think she
had anything to do with it because she didn't seem like that type of person.
She took very good care of her son.
I was very proud of her.
She was a young girl, but she was a mother, and she wasn't one of those girls who partied
and ran around without her child.
End quote.
D’Wanna’S family and friends feel that they're trying to compare her to Susan Smith, a case
that had happened earlier in 1994.
In that case, Susan Smith told police that her two children had been kidnapped in a carjacking.
A few days later, she admitted to killing them by putting them in her car and letting
the car roll into a lake, ultimately drowning her children.
Police believe that she was motivated to murder her children so she could be in a relationship
with a wealthy man who had recently written her a letter saying that he didn't want a
relationship with someone with kids.
Police are also questioning D’Wan’s father and D’Wanna’s live-in boyfriend as well.
Detective Ken Marlo says, quote, we are not focused on any one possibility.
We are pursuing every possible theory.
End quote.
Police return to the mall to search the basement level and the nearby neighborhood, but these
searches don't yield any sign of D’Wan.
On Wednesday, December 14th, it's been three days, police refuse to officially say that
D’Wanna is a suspect.
In the local media, an anonymous police source said that during the search of Dewana's home
and car, they found a letter from a man telling Dewana that he didn't want to be with her
because he didn't want to be with someone who already had a child.
D’Wanna holds a press conference at her mother's home to try to clear her name.
She says, quote, this little black kid is lost in an all-white city.
Lavonia just wants this thing to go away.
One detective even said to me, why don't you just say you lost D’wan in Detroit so
we can be done with this?
Lavonia police had no comment on this statement.
D’Wanna goes on to say, quote, I feel that this investigation has been focused the wrong
way.
I feel a lot of the turns they are taking is because of the Susan Smith case.
I do understand what the Lavonia police have to do, and that's why I've been cooperating
with them to the fullest extent.
I was at the mall.
Me and my son were at the mall.
I don't know about the surveillance tapes.
We walked through Target's door, end quote.
The next day, Thursday, December 15th, police come out to make a statement that they never
found a letter during their search of D’wanna’s home.
Detective Marlow says, quote, that letter does not exist, end quote.
Police, however, are saying that at this time D’wan and D’wanna are not seen on the surveillance
footage from the mall at all.
Police also begin sorting through over 200 tips that have been called in since D’wan’s
disappearance.
Police also reveal that D’wan's grandmother, Beverly, had recently taken out a life insurance
policy for D’wan.
Beverly scoffs at the idea that they would kill D’wan for the money.
She had taken it out for him to hopefully help pay for college.
There are some life insurance policies that you can take loans out on.
Beverly says, quote, I don't even think that policy is even in effect.
They haven't taken one payroll deduction out of my check.
People have gold cars that are worth more than that.
Why would anyone hurt a child for $25,000, end quote.
Police have been holding daily press conferences, and on Thursday, this press conference, they
show photos of D’wanna’s noticeable 1991 red Thunderbird car, asking if anyone saw it and
to call that tip in.
They say, quote, we're exploring every possibility.
And one of those is that D’wan got separated, and possibly he tried to make it back out
to the car.
We're asking the public if anyone has any memories stirred by this and saw D’wan near
the car, end quote.
On Friday, December 16, it's been five days that D’wan has vanished.
The family become frustrated with the investigation.
Beverly says, quote, I think the police is doing everything they can.
They're being very kind to the family, but I think their focus is wrong.
They're focusing on D’Wanna when they should be focusing on D’wan.
The reason why the police are focusing on so many ridiculous things is because they have
no leads whatsoever.
The only thing that bothers us is they seem to be looking for a body, not a baby, end
quote.
Police hold another press conference this day, and this time they show the public the
same jacket that D’wan was wearing, saying, quote, we're looking for anybody who might
recognize this coat.
This might help refresh somebody's memory who was at the scene and saw young D’wan Sims
with this particular coat on, end quote.
At the one week mark, Sunday, December 18, police have D’Wanna retrace all of her steps
from the day that D’wan disappeared.
At this point, D’Wanna has remained firm in her story, but police say that they are unable
to find any witnesses that saw D’Wan and D’Wanna together that day.
The next day, around noon, police show up at D’Wans grandmother's house and ask Beverly
if they can search her home.
They do not have a search warrant, but she allows them to search anyway.
She says, quote, the focus should be on finding D’wan.
They're looking for signs of him.
They're doing what they're supposed to do.
We have nothing to hide.
My family has nothing to hide, end quote.
However, on the next day, Tuesday, December 20, it's been nine days since D’Wan’s disappeared
and police come forward with a bold statement that they do not believe D’Wanna.
They say, quote, we find no evidence that D’Wan Sims was at Wonderland Mall, nor has
anyone come forward to place D’Wan at the mall.
The evidence leads us to believe that D’Wan Sims was not at Wonderland Mall, end quote.
D’Wanna and her family refute this.
D”wanna says, quote, I gave D’Wan a little more freedom than he should have had, but
I'm paying for that now, end quote.
Police say that they can only find D”wanna in the security footage around 4 p.m. when
she's looking for D’Wan with security.
Police also say that they have retraced her steps and could not find any witnesses that
could put D’Wanna and D’wan together that day.
However, when local media talked to the laundromat attendant, they said, quote, police asked
me if I knew anything.
I said it was too busy.
The place was crowded.
It's like that every weekend, a madhouse, little kids all over, running and playing,
end quote.
The next day, after 10 days of searching, police call off the ground search.
In the days that follow, Beverly will admit to local media that D’Wanna told her a different
timeline of events.
According to Beverly, D’Wanna told her that she was at the laundromat between 11 and 1130.
Between 1230 and 1, she swung by Beverly's home to borrow the vacuum cleaner.
While people were at home at Beverly's, they were all upstairs and D”wanna said that
she stayed on the ground floor and in the garage.
Someone who was upstairs did say that they thought they heard D’Wan downstairs that day.
D’Wanna then went back to her house to drop things off.
And then between 1, 15 and 1, 30, she left and headed to the mall.
A month later, in January of 1995, police will confirm that witnesses did see Dewan
and D’Wanna leave their home together at around 1, 15 to 1, 30.
And then a few hours later, witnesses saw D’Wanna in the parking lot without D’wan.
Police are zeroing in on the time between when witnesses saw D’wan get into the car
with his mother and when D’Wanna is later seen on surveillance footage.
Police further reveal that when they do see D’Wanna on the surveillance footage, they see
her enter the mall without D’Wan and walk straight to the area where she initially asked
for help to search for her son.
Over the year of 1995, there will be a few stories about D’wan, but no new leads in his
case.
When suddenly, in October of 1995, a grand jury is held just a few days before D’wan's
fifth birthday.
However, the grand jury will end with no charges filed.
Since grand jury proceedings are confidential and sealed, the public has no idea what went
on in them.
In November of 1995, D’wan has been missing for 11 months.
A letter is mailed to police and news organizations offering tips in the case.
The letter claimed that D’wan was put in a dumpster in Detroit on December 13, two days
after he was reported missing.
The letter said, quote, First of all, D’wan is dead and has been for a while, unquote.
The letter goes on to say that financial issues in the family led to the plot to make D’Wan
disappear.
The letter also claimed that they had attempted to do this earlier, but, quote, Everyone got
scared.
The people behind the whole thing are so scary, end quote.
D’Wanna is also threatened in the letter.
It says, quote, D’Wan’s mother is supposed to die next, end quote.
When the one-year anniversary rolls around in December, the media asks the police about
this letter.
Detective Marlow said, quote, It doesn't give us any information we didn't have, end
quote.
When asked to elaborate, they refuse.
Over the last year, D’Wanna had married her boyfriend and they were expecting their first
child together in the next few months.
However, in August of 1996, D’Wan has been missing for 20 months, D’Wanna is arrested
and ultimately pleads guilty to domestic assault.
It's reported that she threatened her husband with two knives when he didn't take their
daughter out shopping with him and his other child.
D’Wanna will only have to attend a domestic violence class and the judge will order that
she continues her counseling.
The next big update in the case comes in July of 1999.
It's been four and a half years.
The case is reopened by Detroit Major Crimes Unit who feel confident that they're closing
in on the suspect and an arrest will come any day.
While police don't name who their prime suspect is, D’Wanna has no doubts that it's her.
She tells a local paper that the investigator, quote, has assumed he could get me to confess
to something that I did not do.
As long as the investigation focuses on me, it will never be solved, end quote.
A few months later in November of 1999, police will conduct an intense search of Hines Park,
which was about halfway between the mall and D’Wan’s home.
Police find a few items and even bones, but it does not appear that any of these items
were significant since there are no future updates about what was found during the search.
I'm assuming if the bones had been D”WAN’s, they would have announced that.
They do have his parents' DNA on file, so they have something to compare it to.
In 2006, the mall is torn down.
Those who followed the case closely wondered if anything would be found in the rubble,
but just like with everything else, no additional clues about D’wan's whereabouts were unearthed.
In December of 2009, it's the 15-year anniversary of D’wan's disappearance and his family has
missed him every single one of those days.
D;wan's family blame police and the media for focusing so heavily on D’Wanna during the
first few days of the investigation and not on D’Wan.
Livonia police say that D”wanna is still a suspect after all these years, quote, we're
pretty confident D”wan never made it to Wonderland Mall, end quote.
However, in 2009, they do acknowledge that they do have witnesses that also saw D’wan
and D’Wanna at the laundromat, which previously they said they had not.
On the 25-year anniversary of D’wan’s disappearance, this is December of 2019, a man walks into
the Livonia police station and offers his DNA as he believes that he is D”wan.
D’Wanna had spoken with this man as well, but she had her doubts.
The man didn't have D’Wan birthmarks and couldn't tell her D’wan's birthday.
Police do take his DNA and have it tested, but it takes over a year for the results,
which conclude that he is not D’Wan.
While waiting for the DNA results, at the end of 2020, D’Wanna passed away.
With her passing, police acknowledge that the case is now harder to solve, but they
remain committed to closing D’wan's case and finding answers.
So with that, if you know anything about the disappearance of D’Wan Sims in 1994 or his
whereabouts today, please call the Livonia police at 734-466-2470.
And the sources for the timeline today come from Detroit Free Press, Battle Creek Inquirer,
Lansing State Journal, The Item, and The Province.
So that is the case of D’wan Sims.
This is a case that when I started to look into it, I realized that this is actually
a case where there was a lot of coverage.
This got national news coverage at the time in 1994.
And over the years, it has continuously kind of been covered by different podcasts, different
media.
But I personally had not heard of this case.
And once I learned more about it, I needed to research it and I needed to get into it
because depending on what you're listening to, what you're reading, what you're watching,
the story shifts a lot.
And you can probably even tell from my timeline today how much the timeline can shift and
the inconsistencies not only from D’Wanna, but also from police.
There's a lot of inconsistencies in everyone's stories.
So that for me brings up a lot of questions.
One of the things that I wish I could do in this case, like if I could do anything, I
wish I could just pull the case file and review everything and just really understand what
has been said, when it was said, and what evidence do we have to back it up.
We know that D’Wanna, who has been the focus of not only the police during the investigation,
but also other podcasts, other media, a lot of people focus on her inconsistencies.
And I want to acknowledge them as well because they bring up a lot of questions.
But police also have inconsistencies.
We know that police are allowed to lie during the course of their investigation.
And we know that oftentimes they pretend they don't have as much as they really do.
We see that happen quite a bit.
But in this case, they originally are saying that D’Wanna and D’Wan are not seen at all
on any surveillance footage.
They don't see them at all.
But then later they're like, well, D’Wanna was there, but D’wan wasn't there with her.
And there are just numerous instances of that happening where they say no one can confirm
that she was at the laundromat.
But then years later, they'll say that they do have witnesses that saw D’wan and D’Wanna
at the laundromat.
So for me, in just wanting to understand what happened in this case, if I could pull out
that case file and just put it all up on a whiteboard and understand truly what police
do have, what they have been able to verify and what they have not, and then what D’Wanna
said to police and what she said to her family because we know that that story and the timing
differs from the timing she told police to the timing she told her family.
So that's a big thing for me, and I'm sure it's a big thing for a lot of folks in this
case is just trying to really pin down any fact in this case is hard.
It does seem though that they have witnesses between 1.15 and 1.30 that did see D’wan get
in the car with his mother.
And it does seem that at around 4pm, they do have D’Wanna on surveillance footage, searching
for D’Wan in the mall.
It does not seem that police have any other footage before 4pm to show that D’Wanna was
in the mall, even though she said she was there around 2.
So it's really those few hours that really need to fill in the blanks.
And it's so frustrating because it feels like you should be able to draw kind of a map,
like a circle around a map and say like, okay, worst case scenario, D’wan, something happened
and D’Wanna needed to get rid of D’wan’s body, whatever that may be.
She couldn't have driven hours across state lines.
She couldn't have driven into Canada.
They do have like federal agents at the beginning of the case because Detroit is so close to
Canada.
But it's like, she couldn't have driven too far in order to be back at the mall by 4pm
when she is caught on security footage.
So it almost feels like you can circle a map, you know, with an hour radius, an hour to
get somewhere, an hour to get back.
And it's like D’wan is there somewhere.
She's somewhere in that circle, which is so frustrating to think that it's that small.
But I know in scale, it's really so big.
Another question that I had that seemed almost like a little thing, and maybe you all picked
up on it as well, but the letter that is sent to the police and news media that said that
D’wan was put in a dumpster two days after he was reported missing, that the family did
this for money and that D’Wanna was next.
When police are asked about this a month later, they said that no new information was gathered
from the letter.
So to me, that would say that they knew that D’wan was put in a dumpster, that they had
heard this, they had evidence of this, that was a working theory.
Is that part of what they've known?
Do they believe that to be true?
Over the years, police have said that, you know, they remain hopeful that D’wan will
come home alive, that they'll be able to bring him home.
But you know, they recognize as the years pass that that chance was slimmer and slimmer
and slimmer.
But at no point did or has the investigation ever truly switched to a homicide investigation.
So what does this mean?
You know, I'm left with, did they think that he was put in a dumpster?
Or did they just say like there was no new information, like no new clues?
There, you know, that letter was bogus, so nothing new was learned from it.
There's just like a lot of ways to interpret it.
And it seemed like the media at the time picked up on that and police just refused to elaborate
anymore.
My future hopes for this case is that the case remains active.
It doesn't seem like a secret to me.
And I'm sure if you're listening, you also picked up on the fact that police were very
suspect of D’Wanna.
But with her passing, I really hope that police continue to look into this case and review
it and investigate it.
Especially, you know, if she has passed on, if she had something to do with it, maybe
people will be more likely to come forward in the future.
But if she didn't, then I think that she deserves to have her name exonerated.
She has maintained her innocence over the years.
And even though her story timeline has shifted some, it has stayed the same as far as the
sequence of events, you know, picked up on a laundromat, mall, or and the vacuum cleaners
in there too.
So it just feels like if she had nothing to do with this, then her name should be cleared.
And I hope that police are able to find answers in this one way or the other for D’wan, ultimately.
And that's something that his grandmother said again and again and again in this case
is that, you know, people are focusing on D’Wanna, not on D’wan.
And I think that is true to an extent.
And I understand that, you know, they have to investigate people.
But it really did feel like so much focus media attention was on kind of proving Dewana
wrong.
And again, like, I don't know, I really don't know if she had anything to do with it or
not.
I can kind of talk myself in circles around and around about it.
You know, as soon as I'm convinced of her guilt, I think, well, her story hasn't changed
in all these years, they've never been able to bring a charge against her.
So they don't have anything.
And then I'm also once I'm in that camp, I'm like, but the security footage didn't catch
D’wan anywhere.
So I can really talk myself back and forth.
So I know that the community of Detroit and Livonia who, you know, remember this case
are still very much involved in the case and committed to it.
Before I was reading message boards and things like that, so many people in the comments
section lived in the area and think about D’wan all the time.
So they deserve answers.
His family deserves answers.
And yeah, I think the one way or the other, knowing if his mother was involved, like,
those are my hopes for this case that we can get answers to all of those things.
And ultimately, like, I would love it if he came home.
But again, if you know anything about the disappearance of D’wan Sims in 1994, or his
whereabouts today, please call the Livonia police at 734-466-2470.
We will be posting photos of D’wan and some age progress photos on our Instagram.
So please make sure you're checking that out.
You can find us at cold and missing will pop right up.
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Thank you.
You're the best.
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I'm immune over the moon with how kind and supportive you all are.
It really means the world to me.
If you or someone you love is hard of hearing, we have transcripts on our website cold and
missing.com so you can follow along with the podcast there.
But that is all that I have.
Thank you so much for listening to cold and missing.
I'm Allie.
Have a good week and stay safe y'all.