No Body of Evidence

Nancy Ekelund couldn't have imagined a worse day than Christmas 1986. She had just motored her Volkswagen bus down the grade on the north end of the Grapevine and was approaching Bakersfield. At 6 a.m., sunrise was still an hour away. Moisture evaporating off the surrounding fields mingled with cold air dropping from the rock cliffs of the Sierras blanketing the 5 Freeway in a thick fog. Nancy's 5-year-old daughter Lynsie slept in the back seat. Without warning, they were struck from behind by a car they would never see again. The bus careened out of control and rolled violently across the asphalt.

When it was over, Nancy hung by her seat belt, her back broken. As rescue workers extracted Nancy from the wreckage and ferried her to a waiting ambulance, she could see her daughter Lynsie's tiny body, clad in red overalls, lying unconscious in the road, curled into a fetal position.

Nancy would fully recover from her injuries, but Lynsie would never be the same. She would spend the next several months in a coma. Following the accident, she would undergo 28 orthopedic surgeries, including a reconstruction of her crushed trachea, and multiple neuro-surgeries. She would be left mildly paralyzed on her left side, a condition that led to both an intense bond with her mother as well as significant insecurities around her peers. At the time, Nancy couldn't have imagined a worse fate befalling her only daughter.

Fifteen years later, Lynsie disappeared from her quiet Placentia neighborhood. In the early morning hours of February 17, 2001, the whereabouts of Lynsie begin to be in question. The last person to see her says he has a hazy recollection of the evening, and sheds little light on whatever may have happened to her. Few details were available then. Almost a decade later, there aren't many more.

"The police have kept me in the dark for almost eight years," says Nancy of the investigation handled by the Placentia Police Department.

The facts of the case are obscured by conflicting witness statements and the passage of time. What is known is that on that night, 20-year-old Fullerton College student Lynsie Ekelund told her mother she was going to stay with a friend named Andrea. Later that evening, Nancy says 22-year-old Chris McAmis arrived at the door to pick Lynsie up.

After a brief chat, McAmis drove off with Lynsie in his king-cab pickup truck. Nancy hasn't seen her daughter since.

The following afternoon, Nancy says she called McAmis. He told her that he had dropped Lynsie off near her home the previous night at around 11. "He said he left her at the corner, but our house was two doors down from the corner -- so why would he do that? Any gentlemen would walk a lady to the door and make sure the key fit in and say goodnight, so he lied."

Nancy called the police.

Citing the ongoing nature of the case, investigator James McElhinney, a detective with the Placentia Police Department, declines to divulge many details of what the police believe happened that night.

McElhinney is a man of average height with military bearing, a steady poker face and eyes like knives. He will only say there are no formal suspects at this time. Lynsie's disappearance is being investigated as a 'no-body homicide.' In uninflected tones, McElhinney states that Lynsie went to San Diego with one male and two females. The group planned on going clubbing. Instead, they arrived in San Diego, ate dinner and returned home. Lynsie was reportedly dropped off in front of her house Saturday at 4 a.m.

Nancy says that when police first responded to her call, there was little sense of urgency on their part. Indications suggest the case's original investigator, Detective Corrine Loomis, suspected that Lynsie might have disappeared intentionally.

"'They usually come home within two or three days,' I remember Detective Loomis telling me in my living room," Nancy says. "It never happened."

In the March 3, 2001 issue of The Los Angeles Times, Detective Loomis is quoted, "We really don't know if foul play is involved, but we consider her in danger." The article added that there was no activity on Lynsie's bank account or cell phone since the day she disappeared. If intentional disappearance was what Lynsie wanted, her options were limited -- according to her mother, Lynsie lacked the confidence to drive due to her paralysis.

As the days blended to weeks, and then to months, little information came through. Nancy says she would occasionally stop by the police station to "pound on someone's desk," but to no avail. There was some media attention, but shortly after Lynsie's disappearance, public interest in the case winnowed away.

Nancy says she was administered an FBI polygraph, which she maintains she passed. She says a test administered to McAmis was inconclusive. Detective McElhinney declines to confirm either claim.

Karen Spiekerman, who lives in the house directly next to the home where Nancy and Lynsie lived, says she was never questioned by Placentia Police.

Spiekerman speculates that Lynsie was never dropped off that morning. She explains that when Lynsie would pass her house, she would often cut across the Spiekerman's lawn, alerting the family's two dogs. According to Spiekerman, she heard nothing that night.

Discussing the frustrations Nancy has endured over the past eight years, Spiekerman compares Lynsie's case with that of Chandra Levy, the young woman who disappeared after having an affair with Rep. Gary Condit, a case that became a national obsession. "[Nancy] never got what the Levys got because obviously they had more money, and Chandra was doing a congressman."

Detective McElhinney won't specify when the investigation into Lynsie's disappearance shifted gears from a missing persons' search to a homicide case, saying only that it occurred after a "reasonable amount of time."