JACKSON’S MILL, W.Va. — Friends and extended family gathered at the Jackson’s Mill Baptist Church Saturday to hold a prayer vigil for a child that no one has seen a trace of in precisely five years.
Aliayah Lunsford, 3, of Bendale, seemingly vanished without a trace from her home in the early morning hours of September 24, 2011. Family members say they are prepared for the worst possible outcome–her death. But they also make one thing clear: they need resolution and they need closure.
“We have to have it,” Vickie Bowen, Aliayah’s great aunt from Webster County, said Saturday. “We have to have some type of closure. We asked. We begged. We were told we would get monthly updates. We’re not getting anything.”
A representative from the Lewis County Sheriff’s Department said the investigation is open and that numerous law enforcement agencies are continuing to follow leads, but choose not to disclose that information if the leads turn out to be nothing. Bowen said anything resembling communication would be appreciated.
“They come here on the 24th of September and say, ‘We’re still investigating,'” she said. “We need to know the other 364 days of the year as well. We need some reassurance.”
On a night that involved a balloon release, a candlelight vigil, song and prayer in honor of the missing child, Bowen suggested that Aliayah’s disappearance may have been the ‘ultimate sacrifice.’
“I believe Aliayah is a little hero,” Vickie Bowen said. “I don’t know what she has endured in this time, but I do know that there are eight other children out there who have an opportunity for a better life because of this. They don’t have to deal with Ralph and Lena Lunsford.”
“Lena and Ralph both had been involved in drugs. It’s common knowledge. It’s not anything anybody don’t know. So, yeah, [Aliayah] will be my hero.”
The Lunsford’s have been subjected to derision and suspicion since Aliayah went missing. Both Lena Lunsford, Aliayah’s mother, and Ralph Lunsford, her stepfather, have been in and out of prison in the five years since Aliayah went missing.
“Those two people need to tell us what they did–where Aliayah is,” Bowen said.
Bowen said those were the only two people home at the time Aliayah reportedly went missing–and may truly be the only ones who have answers.
“There’s so many rumors,” she said. “There’s so many theories of what could have happened and what did happen. I don’t know. I know that Aliayah had a very troubled life the last five weeks.”
Bowen claims her sister–Lena Lunsford’s mother–had expressed some fear of her daughter’s behavior. Additionally, she believed Lena Lunsford was jealous of the attention her mother Joanne was providing Aliayah.
“Aliayah never bonded with Lena,” she said. “Aliayah knew Joanne–her grandmother–as mom.”
At first, Aliayah had been living with her grandmother while Lena Lunsford was serving a prison sentence. Five weeks before she went missing, Aliayah went to live with her mother.
“I don’t even know how she slipped through the loophole to take the kids out of Joanne’s house,” Bowen said. “I really don’t.”
Joanne, Bowen’s sister and Lena Lunsford’s mother, passed away shortly after Aliayah went missing.
Bowen believes Aliayah Lunsford, who would have turned eight in July, has likely passed on. But she said the only fate worse than Aliayah’s death would be if the remaining family and community never learn the truth.
“We need to get justice,” she said. “Please, let somebody know. Call the State Police. Call the Sheriff. Call the FBI. Call 1-800-THE-LOST. Just call somebody, and let them know.”
“It might be just the one piece of information that is needed to bring this girl home–to get closure.”
Bowen said she has had no contact with either Ralph or Lena Lunsford, but believes Ralph is still in West Virginia.
Lena, she believes, has since moved out of state.