This certainly wasn’t the path Lindsey Bogan appeared headed. At the age of 12, she lost her mother, Debbie Bogan, and was raised by an aunt. She graduated from Madison High School in 2003 and entered nursing school in hopes of a medical career like her grandmother, Opal Bogan.
But Bogan, now 30, dropped out of college because she was out of money, became addicted to drugs and was a known prostitute on Central Avenue in Middletown, according to police and relatives.
And for the last nine weeks, Bogan has been critically missing, a case that’s frustrating the Middletown Division of Police because detectives have followed countless leads with no signs of Bogan. They have looked in vacant downtown buildings, searched riverbanks and cemeteries with cadaver dogs and chased leads throughout the county.
Police admit Bogan could be anywhere and they’re not ruling out any possibilities.
Bogan’s friends created a Facebook page, and while there are 61 likes on the page, no one has said they have seen Bogan.
“I don’t know if I will ever see her again,” said Opal Bogan, her 80-year-old grandmother from Tennessee. “I still love her and I’d tell her that if she walked in that door. I don’t know what happened to her to be honest with you. If I had known what was going to happen, I would have fought harder for Lindsay.”
There was a pause on the phone.
“That,” Bogan said, “well, it’s all in the past now.”
Bogan said she has a cell phone that her granddaughter used to call frequently, mostly when she needed money. She has another cell phone, but kept the original phone and same number just in case her granddaughter calls. The phone hasn’t rung since Bogan was last seen on Sept. 13.
There are nights when Bogan can’t get her granddaughter out of her head. She thinks of the little girl who loved to play with Barbies. Then she wakes up, trying to figure out possible locations of her granddaughter.
She has no answers.
“Then,” she said, “I never got back to sleep.”
Lindsay’s father described her as cute and smart with a great heart. There are photos of Lindsay that paint a different picture. One of a smiling young woman, another one a grim police mug shot.
“She’s still that same girl,” her father said. “She didn’t look for trouble, but she got herself in bad situations.”
Bogan has been missing since Sept. 13, and while she hasn’t been located, Eric Sexton, 48, of Franklin, her boyfriend, was indicted last week by a Butler County grand jury for promoting prostitution. He was arrested by Middletown police after he reported that Bogan was abducted at the intersection of Baltimore Street and Central Avenue in Middletown.
Sexton reported Bogan missing Sept. 14 and said he last saw her the day before getting into a silver Dodge Durango with a stranger in downtown Middletown. Sexton said he and Bogan were planning to get married.
“We had so many plans together,” Sexton told the Journal-News before his arrest. “She was the happiest she had ever been. I treated her like a queen. You can’t treat anyone better than I treated her. We were together for three years, the most amazing three years of my life.”
Sexton told the Journal-News that Bogan wasn’t a prostitute, but when he reported her missing to Middletown police, he said they “engaged in prostitution” activity, according to the report.
He voluntarily submitted to a polygraph on Sept. 24, and told police that when Bogan engaged in prostitution he held the money she made, according to search warrant documents. He told police after her disappearance that he placed her possessions in his mother’s vehicle and stored them in his mother’s home.
Opal Bogan said she was relieved Sexton was indicted, but wished he had been arrested before they met.
“He never should have got a hold of her,” she said. “He was bad news. I don’tt care for her friends. I think they took advantage of her.”
Sexton is housed in the Butler County Jail in lieu of a $50,00 bond. He is scheduled to be arraigned Monday in Butler County Common Pleas Court before Judge Jennifer McElfresh.
Bogan is described as 5 feet, 6 inches, 118 pounds with brown eyes and black hair. She has a rainbow tattoo on her hip and a star tattoo on her shoulder.
Anyone with information about Bogan’s whereabouts is asked to call Lt. Jim Cunningham at 513-425-7747.
The $2,000 reward is being offered by the Greater Cincinnati Crime Stoppers Wheel of Justice Fund. Anyone with information is urged to call 513-352-3040. Callers remain anonymous, as they are identified by code numbers, not names.
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