Police in Illinois are searching for clues in the mysterious disappearance of a woman who vanished on Labor Day weekend in 2018 — but wasn’t reported missing until four months later.
NBC’s Dateline recently devoted a segment to missing Lacon resident Tiffini Murphy, who was last seen in the early morning hours of September 1, when a friend — now a witness in the missing person investigation — dropped her off at a gas station.
Nearly eight month later, the gas station has closed; and investigators were never able to obtain surveillance video evidence from the morning Murphy, 38, disappeared because of what police said was a delay in reporting — though a friend of Tiffani’s claims her family did try to report her missing.
“We didn’t even receive a report that she missing until January 10,” Marshall County Sheriff’s Department Chief Deputy Terry Hattan told Dateline. For that reason, he said authorities were unable to pull surveillance footage from the area. “Nobody reported her missing for an extensive period of time, so any videotape was recorded over. They don’t keep [the footage for] that long.”
The friend, Stephanie Sievert, reportedly told Dateline that Tiffini’s family was not taken seriously when they tried to make a missing persons report, and that loved ones have been spreading missing flyers and looking for the missing woman.
“We’ve done not public searches, but some family and friends searches. We have not found a thing,” Sievert said.
It is unclear if authorities have any leads in Tiffini’s disappearance. A missing persons flyer classifies Tiffini as endangered, and identifies the person who last saw her as her live-in boyfriend.
Hattan told Dateline that her bank accounts and social media profiles have been inactive since she was last seen, but that police are not sure if foul play was involved. She did not have a cell phone at the time she went missing.
“We have people of interest,” Hattan said, adding that investigators have not conducted a ground search, because they don’t have enough information to know where to begin. “There are too many variables right now as to where she may have gone.”
Anyone with information about Tiffini’s disappearance is urged to call the Marshall County Sheriff’s Department at (309) 246-2115.
