Missing Fort Worth woman feared dead

For months, Fort Worth police have been working with law enforcement in West Texas to find a missing woman. Now, detectives tell NBC 5 they believe she’s dead.

In her cubicle in the homicide unit, Detective Joey McAnally scrubs through surveillance footage she's gotten very familiar with over the last few months.

“This is the last time Sheri is seen in Fort Worth," she said, talking about 44-year-old Sheri Vickers.

The Fort Worth woman left a hotel on Cherry Lane on March 23 around 11 a.m.

Vickers was with her on-again-off-again boyfriend, John Lewis, and his friend, another woman, said McAnally.

“She’s got a bag full of clothes, a cell phone," McAnally pointed out as Vickers and the other woman got into a white pickup truck, which had clear damage to the front.

“And there is where Sheri goes dark," McAnally said.

The detective said Vickers talks to her family often: Her adult daughter a few times a week and her father daily, and visited her mother and six-year-old son, who has autism.

She said Vickers was open with them about her struggle with drug addiction.

“She never went without checking in with those people and visiting those people," she said.

But she said Vickers stopped responding to calls and texts during that car ride-- which detectives tracked west to Breckenridge, Texas.

“Her social media, her phone, nothing is ever used again by Sheri," McAnally said.

She said Vickers is never seen getting out of the car, either.

“We have witness accounts that put her passed out, asleep, unconscious, in the front seat," she said.

McAnally said the other woman in the car has been cooperating with their investigation, telling them when she left the group in Breckenridge, Vickers was still unconscious. She told officers when she met up again with Lewis later and asked where Vickers was, Lewis told her he'd dropped her back off in Fort Worth.

But McAnally said she doesn't believe Vickers ever came back here, and Lewis has refused to cooperate with them.

“He said, ‘I don’t want to talk to you,’” McAnally said of the first time someone in her unit had reached out to Lewis by phone.

Since then, she said they've made contact a few more times-- including in jail, where he's currently being held in another county on unrelated charges.

“That’s not really normal, for us to call and say, ‘Hey, you were last with so-and-so, what happened? And then to say, ‘I’m not going to tell you,'" McAnally said.

It's part of what has led McAnally to the belief that Vickers is no longer alive.

“I think there is a chance that I could be wrong," she said. "I wouldn’t mind if I was. But the circumstances around her being asleep in the truck, never waking up, the person she was with not communicating about what happened to her, and then all of her accounts never being heard from again...”

“I think it’s possible that she did pass of unknown circumstances and that for whatever reason, somebody disposed of her instead of just calling the police," McAnally added.

Her team said they would keep trying to get Lewis to open up to them, but in the meantime, they said there's a way to help the family find closure.

“They want their mother found," McAnally said.

She believes Vickers' body is still in the Breckenridge area, and is asking folks-- especially hunters, to keep an eye out.

“I know it’s an unpleasant task," she said. "Looking for her in rural areas, wooded areas... it could be private property.”

McAnally said the family is hoping for some truth to come out about what happened to their loved on.

“They want the closure. And ultimately I think they would like for some justice for her," she said.

Anyone with information is asked to call Fort Worth Police at 817-392-4382.