Mike and Joan Renee Cook had a tumultuous marriage.
"They were never happy," Joan's sister Carol Huffman Byer told Dateline. "It was more of a comfort thing for both of them."
The
couple lived in Salem, Virginia with their young daughter, Ashlyn. But
in 2007, Mike moved to Des Moines, Iowa to find a job, with plans for
Joan and Ashlyn to join him once he was settled.
Meanwhile,
though, Joan was also settling down, herself. She'd gotten a new job -
and a new man. According to Carol, just three months after moving to Des
Moines, Mike found out about Joan's new relationship and moved back to
Salem.
Carol
told Dateline that's when Mike and Joan's rocky relationship took a
turn for the worse. She says Mike started stalking Joan and her new
boyfriend.
"Mike had done a couple of things," Carol said. "He'd
sit outside their work and wait to watch them come out. She says one
weekend she saw him putting nails behind her tires.
"I confronted
him on it and he said, 'It was just a stupid thing I did'," Carol said.
She added, however, that, to her knowledge, her brother-in-law never
made specific threats or showed violence.
By the end of 2009, Carol says Joan was living with her new boyfriend.
"Which
wasn't right - she knew our feelings on it," Carol told Dateline. "She
eventually wanted to get a divorce from Mike, but she couldn't afford it
at the time."
Joan's new boyfriend had a daughter, and had
visitation with her every other weekend; on those weekends, Joan would
stay with Mike and Ashlyn at the family home where they still lived.
On
January 24, 2010, during one of those weekend stays, everything
changed. Carol says it was cold that night and raining -- certainly not
ideal weather for a late-night walk around the neighborhood to see a
friend.
Carol says Mike told her that the evening Joan left had been a completely normal night.
The Roanoke County Police Department did not respond to Dateline's request for comment by publication time, but they said that Joan left her home around 11 o'clock that night. Authorities say their last trace
of the 44-year-old was a text from her phone to the friend she was
allegedly going to see the night she vanished. The text was sent around
5:00 a.m. on January 25 - just six hours after she was last seen - and
simply read: "I love you."
Carol found out about Joan's
disappearance when Joan's work called a few days later and said her
sister hadn't shown up for a couple of shifts.
"I was not able to
get in touch with her," Carol told Dateline. "I talked to her husband
and he said the last time he'd seen her was on the night of the 24th
when she had set off on foot for her friend's house."
Carol said
Mike told her he hadn't reported Joan missing yet, because he figured
she was still around somewhere - she had been living with her new
boyfriend, so Mike wouldn't see her every day anyway.
The Roanoke County Police said Mike then reported Joan missing, and the investigation began.
"The
police department used cadaver dogs in the front and back yard [of
their home]," Carol told Dateline. "There was no blood evidence
anywhere. Just - poof! She was gone."
Carol told Dateline the
police ruled out Joan's new boyfriend as a suspect, because he was out
of town with his daughter that weekend.
Carol said Mike has told
police he and his wife weren't arguing the night Joan vanished, and in
Ashlyn's interview with authorities, the then-7-year-old told police she
didn't hear anything loud or out of the ordinary in the house that
night. Carol, though, believes Mike knows more than he's saying.
"I
truly think something happened between the two of them," Carol told
Dateline. And as the last person to have seen Joan, "he is the only one
who knows anything."
Police also believe someone close to the
family knows what happened. While nobody has been charged in connection
with Joan's disappearance, now retired Roanoke County Police Department
Commander David McMillan told WSLS in 2015 that he was optimistic about
her case being solved.
"With witnesses time usually helps us,
because they have time to think about it -- to learn more and then make
decisions to come forward," Commander McMillan told WSLS.
Carol
said Joan's daughter Ashlyn lived with her for a few months following
Joan's disappearance, but she and her dad Mike have since moved back to
Des Moines, Iowa.
"[My family has] a slight relationship with Mike, only because of Ashlyn," Carol told Dateline. "We can talk on the phone."
Joan's disappearance has caused pain for many of her family members.
"The
ordeal caused my mother to have a mental breakdown. It's been rough on
her," Carol said. "And our dad passed away about a year and a few months
ago, so we'd like to have her home -- to put her beside him."