Police have tracked cell phone signals and examined abandoned cars, yet there's no trace of a woman who vanished last month after going to a Florida night club.
Miami-Dade County police have said they don't know whether foul play was involved in Stepha Henry's disappearance, but family members think something happened to the 22-year-old honors graduate of John Jay College of Criminal Justice.
Henry was visiting relatives in the area with her 16-year-old sister and made plans for a friend's brother-in-law to pick her up on May 29, her aunt Daffodil Samuel said Sunday at the family's home in Brooklyn.
Relatives saw Henry get into a black sedan with a man. There is video of Henry at a Sunrise nightclub and police have said they have questioned a man who told them he left her at the nightspot.
No one has seen or heard from her since. Her cell phone goes straight to voicemail.
"She was a fighter," Samuel said of her petite niece. "I know they didn't take Stepha easily."
An aspiring criminal lawyer
Samuel, who is the sister of Henry's mother, said her niece is fascinated by criminal cases and aspires to be a lawyer.
"She always wanted to be the lady Johnnie Cochran," Samuel said, referring to the late attorney who became nationally known after winning an acquittal of murder charges for O.J. Simpson.
Samuel said her niece often resisted her mother's tendency to inquire about her whereabouts and who she was with and once asked a relative to ask her mother to ease up.
"We just pray that whoever has her will release her so that she can come home and continue her life," Samuel said just before bursting into tears. "We're trusting in God and believing that He will do what He says He will do."
Henry's mother and father have been in Florida since the week their daughter went missing. Her mother has posted fliers seeking information and plans to stay there to keep searching; her father returned to New York on Sunday night.
"She is not going to leave Miami until we know what happened to our daughter," Steve Henry said of his wife, Sylvia.