A quiet neighborhood in Arizona remains haunted by the disappearance of an eleven-year-old girl who vanished within the blink of an eye while waiting outside her Mesa home for an ice cream truck.
Mikelle Biggs had been playing with her younger sister, Kimber, who was nine years old at the time, on a cold January evening when she disappeared.
Filmmaker Elliot Feld, who has been creating a documentary on Mikelle's disappearance 20 years ago, described her home as being in a 'cookie cutter neighborhood' and told the Daily Mail that 'Kimber was getting cold. She wanted to go inside, so she ran inside.' Not long after she walked in the house, the sisters' mother, Tracy, asked where Mikelle was. 'Kimber said, "She's still out there. She's waiting." And Tracy said, "Go back out and get her."'
'It probably was somewhere between 90 seconds and two minutes,' Feld said. Kimber went back out to the end of her driveway and looked down the street, only to find her sister's bike in the middle of the road with the tire spinning and two quarters on the floor next to the bike.
'It was as quick as you could imagine that would be. You're talking about it only taking a couple of minutes,' Feld said. 'There's a chance that Kimber had her back turned and her sister was being taken right behind her as she was cycling into the driveway,' he continued.
Since that fateful day on January 2, 1999, Kimber has spoken publicly about what happened many times in an attempt to find her sister. 'She was standing on the pedals of the bike. You know, the sun is kind of setting. It's that golden hour,' Kimber told AZFamily. 'Her blonde hair is blowing behind her. She was smiling, like pure bliss. I just remember walking in and telling my mom, "we can't find Mikelle." And her face just kind of went pale.'
'Within hours there were police cars. The road was blocked off. There were news cameras. There were helicopters, search parties with posters already going up.' MPD Detective Paul Sipe told 12News that the whole City of Mesa was deeply affected by Mikelle's sudden disappearance. 'It was a huge incident that occurred here at the time,' he told the outlet. 'You've got about a thousand people or more there that we've spoken with.'
The MPD received thousands of tips and countless calls from psychics who claimed to have communicated with Mikelle or know where she was, Feld told the Daily Mail. 'If she has passed, I want to know how she passed. I want to know where her body is. And if she is alive, I need to know where she's been this whole time,' Kimber told AZFamily.
In 2018, a glimmer of hope came in the form of a cryptic dollar bill that was found in Wisconsin that was thought could have had Mikelle's handwriting scrawled on it. The bill read: 'My name is Mikel Biggs kidnapped From Mesa AZ I'm Alive.' The dollar was handed in to the Neenah Police Department but law enforcement were skeptical of it being a major breakthrough in the case. 'It's problematic with a dollar bill. It literally could have been in another country two days ago. Who knows where it's been? Someone gets on a plane with it in their pocket and it moves from here to there or wherever,' Mesa Police Department Detective Steve Berry told People at the time. 'We have excellent forensic folks here and we'll certainly do anything we can, interview anyone we need to, and hopefully we'll learn something new out of this.'
Kimber also wasn't convinced it would find her sister and told The Arizona Republic: 'I don't believe she would have written it, as the circumstances of it don't make much sense. There's always that bit of hope, but I think right now we just want it to lead to someone who knows something.'
Other theories about Mikelle's whereabouts have revolved around a known sexual predator living in the area at the time, Dee Blalock. 'He was a man that lived in the neighborhood, who had shown up at some of the vigils, and was eventually arrested for an attempted rape and attack of a neighbor. He went to prison for two life sentences,' Feld told the Mail. Blalock was put behind bars in November 2000 in the Arizona Department of Corrections on charges including unlawful imprisonment, kidnapping, burglary, sexual assault, aggravated assault and sex offender registration violation, online records show.
Just ten days after Mikelle vanished, Blalock appeared in a video obtained by ABC15, as he told the camera at a 'block watch' event: 'If you're my neighbor and I see that you're living next to me, and I see something suspicious going on... I guarantee you I'd be calling 911.' Blalock had originally denied he was involved in her disappearance and had given an alibi that he had been watching a football game on TV in his garage when Mikelle vanished. His wife backed him up. But after he was arrested in the 2000 case, his wife admitted that on the day Mikelle vanished she'd delivered sandwiches to him in the garage and he'd told her to stay away so she could not account for his whereabouts during the hour Mikelle vanished.
In 2018, Mesa police Sgt Kevin Baggs told People that Blalock also allegedly made a jailhouse confession claiming to be involved in Mikelle's disappearance. Baggs added: 'Everything in my eyes points in one direction, and that is Dee Blalock. But I think it's equally important that we say it could be someone else. Until the killer, if it's not him, comes forward and leads us to her body, we may never get those answers.' Blalock has never been charged in relation to Mikelle's disappearance.
Police at the time of Mikelle's disappearance originally pointed fingers at Mikelle's father, Darren. 'That was sort of an incorrect route,' Feld told the Mail. 'They realized after a couple months that Darren was not the suspect [but] they put a lot of time into Darren, only to learn that he was not a suspect.' Feld said the first few months of Mikelle's disappearance was incredibly difficult for Darren, who lost his daughter and was also being followed and wiretapped by police. 'Not only did this poor guy lose his daughter, but now, he was being blamed for it... So that stuck with him for a really long time... He has since come to terms with the fact that the police were just trying to do their job and that even if they were wrong, some of them were fully convinced it was him. And they were trying to solve the case,' Feld, who has been interviewing the family for the documentary, said.
Feld has also interviewed three of the main detectives who worked on Mikelle's case, who all laid bare how much her disappearance affected their own psyche. 'Some of them got teary eyed in the interview because we're asking them questions that they've intentionally tried to forget, but they're trying not to remember this case that they couldn't solve, which is also really hard when you're a detective, that's your job,' Feld said. One detective, according to Feld, declined to interview but discussed Mikelle's case over lunch. '[He is] seriously affected by it... just one of those ones he can't forget. He did not want to open all those doors again,' Feld said.
Feld said that the family have all attempted to carry on with life and added: 'They're living their lives and doing their best to just work and put food on the table.... but they all feel subtly, a little different... They all have this big loss. There's always hope. There's always hope... statistically, when you look at the case, you look at how many years it's been.. If you're asking me, do I think Mikelle's alive? Probably not.' For Feld, he believes someone had been watching Kimber and Mikelle on that fateful January evening. 'I think that if I had to put money on it, I would say that somebody was watching them, even if it was for a few minutes, that somebody was watching,' he said.
The Daily Mail reached out to Kimber Biggs and the Mesa Police Department for further comment. Once complete Feld's documentary is expected to hit the film festival circuit.
