Where is Jessica Stacks? 28-year-old mother of three missing for two years
Dec. 31—NEW ALBANY — Two years ago, Jessica Swenor Stacks reportedly stepped out of a boat on the Tallahatchie River in western Union County and has not been seen or heard from since.
While officially a missing person case since a body has never been found, her mother feels Stacks, 28, is dead.
"I don't know what happened, but I know my daughter's gone and she's never coming back," said Cathy Paden of Nettleton. "She was a good girl until she got into drugs."
The details about the day Stacks went missing are minimal and sketchy. The story — as told to authorities — is that Stacks and her boyfriend, Jerry Wayne Baggett, 45, launched a flat-bottom Jon boat into the Tallahatchie River channel off County Road 46 in the early morning hours of Friday, Jan. 1, 2021. Security camera footage at the Poolville Quick Stop on Highway 30 shows Baggett's truck towing a boat before 5:30 a.m. Sunrise that day was at 7:03 a.m.
The couple reportedly wanted to take advantage of unseasonably warm weather to search the bottom for wild hogs or deer stranded on high ground in the flooded river bottom.
The plan, according to Baggett, was to float down the channel from County Road 46 about 3.5 miles and then get out at the Rocky Ford bridge where Highway 30 crosses over the river. He kept his phone, but they gave Stacks' phone to a friend so they could call and tell him where to pick them up.
The water was flowing faster than usual, and Stacks asked to get out about 2 miles downstream. She got out on the right bank and said she was walking back to County Road 46. The boat was later found beached on the opposite bank about a half-mile farther downstream. Baggett told police he got out of the boat and called someone to come pick him up.
Stacks was not reported missing until 10:15 that night, more than 12 hours later, and not by Baggett.
The Union County Sheriff's Office began searching for Stacks that night but had to call it off at 2 a.m. on Jan. 2. The search resumed at daylight that Saturday morning.
"That entire area was under water," said Union County Sheriff Jimmy Edwards. "It was Sunday before it receded enough to get to the side of the river on foot. People walked the river, and we had drones flying."
Law enforcement officials say the searches uncovered footprints and other items believed to belong to Stacks in a heavily wooded section just inside the Holly Springs National Forest. The footprints went about 100 yards, heading toward County Road 46, before turning north toward Highway 30. The trail ended in a flooded field. Along with the footprints, searchers found the top of a woman's boot that had been cut off, a coat, a glove and a shovel with a broken handle. Later searches included divers and dogs, but nothing else was found.
The river, which drains into Sardis Lake, usually recedes in the late summer. Around August 2021, the searches resumed, this time with cadaver dogs. Officials worked with the Army Corps of Engineers to put up a berm across the channel to temporarily hold back most of the water, then brought in an excavator to dig up areas along the river.
Those efforts uncovered nothing. There has been little new information on the case since.
Questions raised
For many, the idea of putting a boat into a flooded river to search for wild hogs raises questions.
"Animals can get stranded by the high water," Edwards said. "Folks will try to catch a deer or a hog when the banks (of the channel) are the only thing not under water. Not everyone does it but hogs have gotten popular in that area."
Although there isn't a boat landing at County Road 46, just a little dirt road going down to the river, people have been known to park there and put in boats to fish, the sheriff said.
The bigger question is how the couple planned to control the boat in the raging, rain-swollen river. The aluminum Jon boat had no motor, and Baggett and Stacks reportedly were using shovels to paddle the boat down the river.
But officials say that could have seemed like a perfectly acceptable outing to them at the time. Edwards said the couple was battling a drug addiction, which may have impaired their thinking.
"What may make sense to you and me, doesn't always make sense to someone on drugs," Edwards said. "The hunting part (of the story) is not too far fetched."
Stacks' mother, however, doesn't believe her daughter — who loved the outdoors — would have gotten into the boat to go hog hunting, no matter her state-of-mind.
"She loved to go fishing, but she's not stupid. She only weighed 105 pounds soaking wet," Paden said. "It was pitch black dark. There are no street lights out there. She wouldn't go hog hunting. She would have gone fishing."
The mother also questions where Stacks' purse and phone were found. The purse was found in the boat. Paden said if her daughter had gotten out of the boat, as Baggett had told investigators, she would have taken her purse with her.
Likewise, the mother feels her daughter would have never left her cell phone with Baggett's friend, Willie Stinson.
"Now you tell me she's going to let a stranger use her phone. That's a crock," Paden said.
Paden said she had not seen her daughter in several days before she went missing. When she tried to call Stacks at around 10 a.m. on Jan. 1, a strange man answered. She asked him to have Jessica call her. When she had not heard from her by that evening, she knew something was wrong, and she called Stacks' phone again.
The man said he did not know where Stacks was and hung up. According to Paden, Baggett's daughter contacted her moments later and told her not to worry about Stacks.
That was between 7 and 8 p.m. Jessica wasn't reported missing until after 10 p.m.
Mother's disapproval
Paden never liked her daughter's boyfriend.
Baggett was 45, just a couple of years younger than Paden and far older than the 28-year-old mother of three. In fact, most of Stacks' new friends were in their mid to late 40s.
According to Paden, Stacks' off-and-on relationship with Bagett lasted a couple of years and included physical abuse.
"I've seen her with bruises and her hair pulled out," Paden said. "My daughter came to the house with her eyes beat shut. He once left her on the side of the road in the summer heat with no water. He put her out on the highway at the Brewer exit."
Although Baggett and Stacks had been dating for quite some time when the latter disappeared, Paden said he has never offered condolences or an explanation of what happened the last day Stacks was seen. She said he's never contacted her at all.
"He's never called — not even once," Paden said. "His daughter brought me Jessica's clothes."
The Daily Journal made multiple attempts to contact Baggett for this story, but was unsuccessful.
Where is Jessica Stacks?
Over the last two years, Paden has heard plenty of theories about what may have happened to her daughter.
One of the more popular theories making the rounds on social media is that Stacks intentionally disappeared to escape an abusive relationship.
Paden, however, doesn't believe her daughter simply chose to vanish.
"We're poor folk; if we leave, we're taking our phone, clothes and money," Paden said. "She didn't run away. She might run from him, but she would have run to me."
Other amateur theories have Stacks' body being fed to hogs, stored in a well or buried out in the woods.
The latter is believed by Barbie Floyd, who claims to have first-person knowledge of Stacks' final hours.
"They killed her on my back porch and put her in the lake across the street," Floyd said. "(The day before), Jessica helped me take down the Christmas tree and I gave her a clean needle. We were doing a lot of drugs then."
Floyd said Stacks, Baggett and Baggett's friend Billy Jack Rodgers came to her house Dec. 31, 2020, to do drugs. She said the other three left in the early morning hours of Jan. 1, 2021.
"Billy Jack ran back to the house, and I heard him say, 'That didn't mean you had to kill her,'" Floyd said. "After they left, my daddy's shovels were gone, and there was blood on the porch."
She thinks the conspirators came back a few weeks later and moved Stacks' body deeper into the woods. Floyd said she told her story to detectives, but because she was on drugs, no one listened to her.
"I wouldn't have listened to me either," Floyd said.
About three weeks after Stacks went missing, a spot opened up in rehab. Floyd checked herself in and has been clean since.
"It got me straight. It took (the death of) a 28-year-old girl to get me sober," Floyd said. "I want her to be found. I don't want a reward. I want the family to know what happened."
Future of the investigation
While little new information has come in on Stacks' disappearance, investigators continue to work the case. At some point, Baggett agreed to take a polygraph test. While the test is not admissible in court, it can be a useful tool to help police rule out suspects.
Edwards refused to say whether Baggett showed signs of deception during the test, saying he did not want to do or say anything that could jeopardize the case, if it ever goes to trial.
What's clear is that answers are unlikely to come soon.
"In June or July of this year, we took everything we had in the file, put it in chronological order and sat down with the District Attorney prior to a grand jury," Edwards said. "We went over everything, and in his opinion, at this point we don't have enough to present it to a grand jury. We don't have a body. It takes a pretty good bit of proof to get an indictment.
"(We've) done everything we knew to do," Edwards added. "We checked every lead, but there has been no fruitful information. As heartbroken as we all are that we never found her, we wish and hope that we can go forward with the investigation."
