Niqui McCown was looking forward to her wedding, but in July 2001, she seemed to vanish into thin air. People who cared about Niqui and the police looked everywhere for her, but they never found her.
The first half of “Still a Mystery: Danger at Close Range” on Investigation Discovery is about what happened when Niqui went missing and what clues the police were able to find afterward. So, if you have the same question, we have the answer.
Where Did Niqui McCown Go?
Marilyn “Niqui” Renee Nicole McCown grew up in the Indiana town of Richmond. People said that the young woman was pretty, smart, and funny, and that she had her whole life ahead of her. At the time of the incident, Niqui was a corrections officer at a local prison and was taking care of her daughter Payton, who was nine years old at the time. The 28-year-old woman had been separated from Payton’s father for a while and was getting married to her high school sweetheart, Bobby Webster.
On July 22, 2001, Niqui, Bobby, and Payton went to church together. Around noon, they went their separate ways. Niqui took Payton to her parents’ house and then went to a nearby laundry service to get her clothes cleaned. According to the show, Niqui came back an hour later, but then left again to get her laundry. But there was no sign of her coming back this time. The family looked for the young mother for a long time after they heard she was missing on July 23, 2001, but they haven’t found her yet.
Is Niqui McCown still alive or dead?
The show says that Bobby’s actions after Niqui went missing made people suspicious. He had pawned her ring and was trying to get the wedding deposit back. The polygraph test on Bobby also showed that he was lying. But in the end, the authorities ruled him out. The case went nowhere until Niqui’s car was found in an apartment complex in Dayton, Ohio, in November 2001.
Niqui used to live in that apartment, and Payton’s father was still living there when the car was found. Some of her clean clothes were also in the car. But there was no forensic evidence in the car, so this turned out to be a dead end. Tommy Swint was one of Niqui’s coworkers at the prison, so the police eventually turned their attention to him. The show said that Tommy was crazy about her, but she only saw him as a friend. The police were interested in him, but there was no proof that he had anything to do with the disappearance.
Then, in 2007, Tommy took an oath of office in Trotwood, Ohio, as a police officer. But he quit within two months when it became clear that he was still a suspect in Niqui’s case. In November 2007, the police got a tip that Tommy might have had something to do with a murder that happened in 1991. In December 1991, some tree trimmers in Jefferson Township, Ohio, found the dead body of Tina Marie Ivery in a pile of brush.
Tina’s body was wrapped in taped-together plastic bags and then in a quilt. She had been beaten and strangled to death. She was naked below the waist. At the time, the police had collected sperm, blood, and fingerprints, but they didn’t find anything else. Then, in May 2008, it was decided that Tommy’s sperm was on Tina’s jacket and that he couldn’t be ruled out as the source of the blood stain. In November 2009, the crime lab found that Tommy’s fingerprint was on the tape found at the scene.
Tommy said he didn’t know Tina and didn’t have anything to do with her death, but on February 3, 2010, he was charged with her murder. About an hour later, as the police were coming up to Tommy’s house in Phenix City, Alabama, to arrest him, they heard a gunshot. The 43-year-old had shot himself in the head with a gun to kill himself. At that time, he had not been accused of taking Niqui.
Tommy would never be able to find peace about Niqui’s case now that he is dead. But the family hasn’t given up hope over time. Payton, who was now an adult, still wanted to find her mother. In July 2021, she said, “What I want to do is go back out there. I want to get back into footwork. I would like to put up the flyers. I want to go around and look at the case again to see where we missed something. Even if we find answers, we’ll have to deal with this for the rest of our lives, but I think having closure would help us a lot.
Case
Niqui McCown, a prison guard, was engaged to Bobby Webster when she was 28 years old. Three weeks before their wedding, on July 22, 2001, she went to her mother’s house feeling upset. She told her about a time when two men bothered her at a laundromat and wouldn’t leave her alone. She was scared to go back to get her laundry, but she left her mother’s house in the end.
She disappeared that day, and no one has seen her or heard from her since. The police couldn’t find any signs of wrongdoing or a reason why she might have left.
The day Niqui went missing started out like any other day. She went to church and then did the laundry while Bobby met his best man at a tuxedo shop. They were going to meet up later that afternoon. Only three weeks remained before their wedding, and Niqui wanted it to be extra special. From a previous relationship, she had a nine-year-old daughter, and even her ex-boyfriend seemed happy for her. Even though she was the youngest and youngest-at-heart of ten children in a close-knit family, she had always been a perfectionist.
After Niqui went missing, her family and the police looked into a number of possible reasons. At first, they thought that the men from the laundromat might have taken her. Bobby was also a suspect when he started acting strangely in the weeks after she went missing. He didn’t just put off their wedding; he cancelled it altogether. The day after she went missing, he called Sinclair Community College to ask for her unpaid tuition back. He reportedly got angry when he found out that her employer was paying for it. He also wanted to give back his wedding ring, but the manager wouldn’t let him because Niqui had paid for it. He says he did this because he needed the money to look for her and buy a cell phone. He agreed to take a polygraph test when investigators asked him to. They said that he had failed. But he says that neither he nor his lawyer were ever able to see the results.
Strangely, Niqui’s car was found in Dayton, Ohio, on November 5, three months after she went missing. It was in the parking lot of an apartment complex. It took her more than 45 minutes to get there from her home in Richmond. The door lock was broken, the ignition had been messed with, and the stereo system was gone. Her clothes were also still in the house. There were no prints in or around the car. Her ex-boyfriend had lived in a different part of the apartment complex where it was found, which was strange. But he had a place to be on the afternoon she was last seen. He is not thought to have anything to do with it.
Police did find out that Niqui had called a coworker in Dayton and asked about hair and makeup products. The coworker told her that there was a store in Dayton where she could buy them. The coworker’s house was about a mile away from the apartment building. Niqui might have driven there, people think. Some people thought that the person who took her might have driven her car there to get people’s attention off of them. This brought the police back to Bobby. But he says he is not guilty and doesn’t know anything about where she went. Her sister thinks he is not guilty. But her mother is still not sure about him.
Suspects: Bobby was thought to have something to do with Niqui going missing. He broke up with her and tried to get his wedding ring back. He also took and failed a polygraph test. But since then, he is no longer a suspect.
Two men who had been bothering Niqui at the laundromat were also thought to be suspects. But they were never found or identified. Her clothes were found in her car, which shows that she made it safely out of the laundry mat. Investigators finally found a surveillance video that had been taken from across the street. It showed that she left without any harm.
The car of Niqui’s ex-boyfriend was left at the apartment complex where he lived. But he had an excuse: on the day she disappeared, he was at work. He wasn’t a suspect because he had an alibi and he passed a polygraph.
This case was first shown on the episode from September 19, 2002.
It was also talked about on the shows Missing, Crime Watch Daily, and Disappeared.
Tommy Swints
No solution found. After Niqui went missing, Tommy Swint, who used to work with her, was named as a suspect in her case. He was from Trotwood, Ohio, and he worked as a security guard and a corrections officer. He later got a job as a police officer, but he had to quit because he didn’t tell them he was a suspect in her disappearance. He sued the police department, saying that they never told him they thought he was a suspect. But it was thrown out when the police department showed proof that he knew he was a suspect.
In November 2007, a person told the police about the lawsuit after hearing about it in the news. The source told them to look into Swint as a possible suspect in the death of Tina Ivory, who was 33 years old. She was from Dayton and worked as a prostitute. On December 17, 1991, she was killed. When the police talked to one of Swint’s old girlfriends, she said that he used to date Tina. She also said that Tina was found wrapped in a blanket that looked like one that he had in his car. Later, her nephew told police that he had seen a trail of blood from her basement window to Swint’s car.
In 2008, Niqui’s sister told the public that Niqui had been seeing Swint before she disappeared. They had met when they both worked at the same prison. She tried to get in touch with her sister several times on the day she went missing. Her sister thinks she was trying to tell her about the relationship. Swint was thought to be a suspect soon after she went missing. Her car was found where he lived, at an apartment complex.
In May 2008, DNA from Tina’s sperm and blood was matched to that of Swint. His print was also found on the tape that was wrapped around her body. He was charged with killing her on February 3, 2010. But on the same day, he killed himself at his home in Alabama. Police now think he is the most likely person to have taken Niqui. They also think he might be responsible for other murders. But since he is dead now, no charges can be brought against him. The police have also found out that he was seeing someone else at the time Niqui went missing. They think she knows something important about the case. But she has been unwilling to talk to the police.
In November 2003, bones that were thought to be Niqui’s were found near Spencer, Indiana, but DNA tests couldn’t say for sure. She is still listed as missing by the government.