On August 20, 1999, two women and a toddler were last seen at a babysitter’s on the outskirts of Nekoosa, Wisconsin, but it would take years for an investigation to begin.
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Forgotten Wisconsin Cold Cases: Junelle Marquard, Dakota & Dayna Menger
Aug. 3, 2023
August of 1999 — Then-President Bill
Clinton’s impeachment trial began in the Senate, Bruce Willis left people questioning everything in the thriller ‘The Sixth Sense,’ Christina Aguilera claimed the top spot on the Billboard Hot 100 with her breakthrough hit ‘Genie in A Bottle,’ and on August 20, 1999, two women and a toddler were last seen at a babysitter’s on the outskirts of Nekoosa, but it would take years for an investigation to begin.
“There’s people out there that do know what happened, but they don’t want anybody to know,” said a person who agreed to go by Kate for this interview.
“I have this child and the mother has not come back,” said Detective Brian Machon, Nekoosa Police Department
Kate added, “We lost not only our mom, we lost the relationship between also siblings, because they just vanished, everybody vanished.”
It’s an unfortunate truth, but people disappear all the time. It’s not illegal to move and start over especially if you’re an adult.
“If you want to go missing, you can go missing, you know, if you’re an adult, and you want to go live off the grid, you can do that,” Machon said.
Sometimes, people drop everything and everyone on purpose, but sometimes it’s more sinister.
In Kate’s mind, “I think there was foul play in this and she’s probably gone.”
21-year-old Junelle Marquard and 27-year-old Dayna Menger are no strangers to police
“There’s a drug history, there’s a history of some thefts,” said Machon. “I think we would probably classify today as really, kind of a habitual criminal history, but I mean minor offenses — nothing that someone would run away from the law for years.”
The pair were friends. Junelle lived in Wisconsin Rapids and Dayna lived in an apartment with two of her three kids in Nekoosa which is actually just a stone’s throw away from the police department.
Like most single moms, she relied on babysitters to help from time to time.
On Friday, August 20, Dayna, her 2-year-old son, Dakota, and Junelle dropped off Dayna’s youngster daughter, we’ll call her Sara, at the babysitter’s.
Machon added, “So this particular babysitter in Saratoga, it was fairly common for that one child to be watched by her.”
It seemed like a typical drop-off, but hours went by, Saturday came and went, and hearing this, we thought it was odd that a mom would leave her child for more than a day without saying something or at least leaving extra clothes.
However, this was pretty normal for Dayna — at first.
“I think she had said that it would not be uncommon for Dayna to be gone for a couple of days, but started to get beyond the normal,” Machon said. “Activity, I guess what she was used to from Dayna. And then said, hey, something’s going on here.”
Days went by and 4-year-old Sara was never picked up so eventually, the babysitter called Human Services.
It’s unclear how many days after, but eventually police said Dayna’s parole officer contacted Nekoosa PD. The three technically weren’t reported missing then, but that’s information we’ll get into in a little bit.
It was enough to raise a couple of eyebrows though.
“One of the Nekoosa officers went over to the apartment and talked to the manager over there. They took a peek, and everything appeared normal,” said Nekoosa Police Chief Shawn Woods.
He was one of the original detectives on the case and has since passed it over to Det. Machon.
So, months go by, then years, and no one hears from the trio.
Kate doesn’t remember exactly when she found out that her family was missing, but she does remember a very cryptic phone call from her mom. The last phone call.
“She said that she loved me and that she did something really, really bad. And she was crying and she was upset. And I remember, you know, kind of like looking at my grandma, like, you know, I don’t understand, like, I don’t get what was going on. And my grandma ended up taking the phone and said that you know, she said that she was leaving and she wasn’t coming back.”
We wanted to know what the police thought when she told them. Surely, even though the three weren’t technically reported missing, police would’ve reached out to people closest to them including Dayna’s oldest daughter.
Kate was young, around seven or eight, but it’s not a stretch to think she would’ve had some memories or information worth contributing.
“No, I wasn’t interviewed until the end of 2017,” Kate said. “That was the first time I’ve ever had a conversation with anybody.”
2017 — 18 years after her sister was left abandoned at the babysitter’s.
“They never reached out to my grandmother, they never reached out to my father, none of that,” Kate added.
It was in 2004 that Dayna’s brother reported her missing, which triggered an official investigation, but by then investigators were five years behind.
It’s hard not to wonder what would’ve happened if they had started digging in when the babysitter reported the situation to human services and well, Kate agrees.
She stated, “At that point, I felt that you know, in my situation, if I was in that place, that I would have done that investigation at that point. You know, because, I mean, how often are people just abandoning children? Like, let’s be honest, you know?”
There were so many red flags back in 1999.
Two missing women, a missing toddler, an abandoned child, and two untouched apartments.
Why didn’t the police start an investigation then?
“There are certain criteria we have to follow,” Machon said. “The family member reporting someone missing really is a key piece to this.”
However, it’s not a requirement. By the time police started their official search, the apartments were cleared out.
Which means whatever possible evidence was inside, is gone.
Machon added, “Yeah, potentially, just to see, you know, what things were left inside? And you know, what they’re up to? Did they? Did they pack a suitcase? Some, you know, something as simple as that.”
“We’re not just interviewing a person one time,” Machon stated. “We may interview a person one day, then interview someone else that gives us more information that we have to circle back to someone we already interviewed. So it’s a lot of interviews and re-interviews of people.”
In an email, the detective said they’re still searching for “the vehicle” they suspect is involved with this case and are searching databases in hopes of locating it, but they wouldn’t say whose vehicle they’re looking for or what it looks like.
Nekoosa PD did say though that Dayna had connections in Milwaukee, and Kate remembers her mom leaving for days to spend time there.
However, if any considerable information was gathered from that part of the state, police wouldn’t say.
“We’ve reached out, we’ve gathered information from that area and we continue to,” said Machon.
During our interview, the chief and detective shared candidly that it’s highly unlikely their disappearance was voluntary.
Kate has similar feelings, “I definitely feel like there was some kind of situation where she probably felt threatened that she had to leave, but I think her intention would have been to come back. I truly believe that I think there was fear.”
So we asked police, has anyone ever been considered a person of interest?
“I would say that we’ve developed people or persons of interest,” Machon stated. “We’re not at a point to discuss those people publicly, but we’re still working on figuring out their involvement or what they may or may not have to do with this.”
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