The Day Akia Disappeared
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We walk to our house. I get this eerie feeling.

I was so afraid to walk up the stairs. It just felt like we were in a horror movie. You have a 22-year-old pregnant female that doesn't show up for her baby shower. Her family was frantic. Absolutely. Somebody please help our daughter. No one wanted to report on her story. I had someone tell me she wasn't newsworthy. No one that we knew of wanted to hurt her.

She was all over social media, and that is crucial. Because when that stops, that tells you something. Absolutely. We were looking at anyone close to Akia. I can't tell you what happened to her. I don't know. If I was a detective, I would be looking for us, too. You got one guy, two women. This is a love triangle if there ever was one. It's classic. People commit heinous acts when they're desperate.

Anything but this. Anything but this. A young mom with a baby on the way vanishes. A frantic family and an urgent mystery. I'm Lester Holt, and this is Dateline. Here's Josh Mankiewicz with The Day Akia Disappeared. The arrival of a new baby can offer promise, possibility, happiness.

And sometimes those first cries from an infant are also the last moments of innocence before the hard realities of life change everything. Happiness, possibility, and hard reality. Akiya Eggleston was on a first-name basis with all three. She was excited about this baby shower. I'm having a baby shower. Hope you come. And I was like, of course, you know, I'll be there.

It was May 2017. Akiya's aunt, Sonobia Wilson, was excited for her niece, who at 22 was eight months pregnant with her second child. Akiya's stepfather, Sean, and his wife, Angelique, were happy too and impressed by how Akiya had organized her own baby shower.

She planned it herself. She planned it herself. She paid for it and planned it. She was ready for it. She was looking forward to it. Absolutely. It was a day to celebrate. Akiya was already a single mom to a beautiful two-year-old named Emery. Her best friend, Stephan Foster, had always been there for Akiya and her daughter. Emery, she is my goddaughter. Loved her like my own child. And Akiya was happy. The tables were set. The balloons filled.

The guests beginning to arrive. There was just one thing missing. I got a phone call around like 2.30. Hey, we're all here. She's not here. And I'm like, what do you mean she's not here? She's not here and she's not answering the phone. Akiya's bestie, Stefan, was supposed to be her ride that day. He says he was waiting for word from Akiya to come and get her.

I started getting phone calls asking me, where's Akia, where's Akia? Because everyone knew the condition she was in. She had a very complicated pregnancy. The next call was to 911. What's the address of the emergency? Yes, I would call the missing report. Who's missing? Akia Eggleston.

Stephan and other guests decided calling 911 was not enough. That's when we all collectively decided, let's go down to local police department. You get a phone call. Her grandmother called me and she said, Akia is missing. And

And I said, what do you mean she's missing? Like, she can't be found missing. What do you think would happen? I was thinking hopefully she's in a hospital. You know, a complication had arisen and she had to go to the hospital. That was my first thought. Somebody took her to a hospital and we don't know where she is. I mean, the baby was due within, what, a couple of weeks? A couple of weeks, yeah. So not inconceivable that the reason she's not there is she's having the baby. Right. Correct. That's what we were thinking.

That's what we were at least hoping at the time. Yeah. I'm hoping. Yeah. In their desperation, Akia's family rushed to her home, hoping she'd somehow be there. Instead, they found a chaotic scene. As we walked to our house, I get this eerie feeling like something's not right.

Aunt Zenobia says the furniture was gone, and so were Akia's clothes. And we see this hole in the wall. Something had clearly happened there, they thought. But what? The family scoured the outside area. We did a search at the nearby park close to her house with her grandparents and us and her aunts and her friends and family. We just searched and scoured that whole park. I remember the day we did the search. I remember getting into the water.

I walk in the shoreline of the park. And thinking, I hope I don't find anything. Thinking, I hope I don't find anything. Scared to death. Worse still, they learned no one had actually heard from Akia in a few days. With every minute that goes by and you don't hear from her, that's just a little bit more bad news, isn't it? Agony and devastation.

What Akia's family needed most right then was for police to get their teeth into Akia's life. That would mean talking with the people she knew. I can't pull this girl out of thin air. And hearing stories Akia's family knew nothing about. I do not know. And if somebody is telling you that I'm hiding something, no. F*** no. No.

When Akiya Eggleston didn't show for her own baby shower, her family knew something was wrong, really wrong. They knew she would never just up and leave, and certainly not without her two-year-old daughter. Akiya had lost her own mother at just 17. And if she'd been in any kind of trouble, she'd never mentioned it to her parents.

She was always good and happy and bubbly and talking about her future endeavors. But she never really told us what was going on. Everything was all rainbows and unicorns. When you would say, who are you going out with? Who are you dating? She'd say, I'm working. I'm having fun. There's no problems. Everything's great. Step back. Right. Step back. I'm an adult now. Now with a key I'm missing.

They wondered what she hadn't told them. What are police telling you? Communication wasn't that great because there was always, well, we can't tell you anything because it's an ongoing investigation. Baltimore police did search the area around Akia's house. You guys did a canvas? Yes. Nobody reported screaming? Nobody heard a fight? No. Terry McClarnie has been with the Baltimore Police Department since before Akia was born.

We went through every house over here, all the houses up there, came out with maybe two dozen detectives, and then another time with about a dozen, and no one could tell us anything. As Akia's due date came and went, Detective McClarnie and his partner Jill Beauregard began to piece together a timeline leading up to Akia's disappearance. These are the last known images of her in a bank four days before her baby shower.

One problem was that she was last seen on May 3rd and wasn't reported missing until May 7th. So you have that time frame and the fact that those days went empty were suspicious in and of themselves. Detectives also learned Akiya's usually constant Facebook activity abruptly stopped on the afternoon of May 3rd.

The last thing she ever posted was this invitation to her baby shower, which was to be in four days. And Akia's pregnancy had not been easy. And she was eight months pregnant, high-risk pregnancy. So to just disappear on her own, highly unlikely. When that stops, that tells you something. Absolutely. So, you know, a number of interviews are conducted online.

and we quickly realized that she's in a relationship with an individual by the name of Michael Robertson. Michael Robertson was Akia's boyfriend, and according to her, the father of her unborn baby. It wasn't long before he and detectives were face-to-face. Michael and Akia were from the same neighborhood. He was older, but they eventually started dating.

He said it wasn't just Akia's beauty that attracted him. It was her heart. When Michael was down on his luck, Akia opened her home to both him and his children, sharing what little she had. I had literally nowhere else to go, and nobody else would help. She didn't want nothing from me. She just really wanted to help me out, because she cared. Michael Robertson told detectives he and Akia were not exclusive.

That's why Michael questioned whether he was, in fact, the father of that baby. Michael said he told Akia he would take a DNA test once the baby arrived, and that if it was his, he would step up.

He told investigators that's when Akia started asking for more than he was ready for. He said that's why Akia broke up with him six days before the baby shower. She had put his stuff in bags and he said, I can take a hint.

So I'm out of here. So when you got there and your stuff was packed, did you wait for IKEA to get there? Yeah, I waited. I waited for a while. I called her and I texted her and I didn't get no response. And I was like, well, okay, I can take a hint.

Michael insists that he wanted to help.

and he pointed investigators to someone else, someone he said they really should be looking at. So any time she called and said, jump the S.O.R.,

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Baltimore detectives were trying to follow the trail left by a missing mom-to-be named Akia Eggleston. Michael Robertson was her boyfriend. He said they'd broken up days before she vanished, and he hadn't heard from her since. I do not know where she is. She's not with me. I can't pull this girl out of thin air. Michael had told police about someone who might know exactly where Akia was.

Her best friend, Stephan Foster. Michael claims Stephan was obsessed with Ikea. By all accounts, Stephan is devoted to her. 100%. If she needed money, he would provide her money for rent. If she needed a ride somewhere, he was right there.

Investigators learned Akia trusted Stefan so much, she gave him the passwords to both her Gmail and Facebook accounts and a key to her apartment. Stefan was a security guard and owned a gun. That made Sanobi a wonder. If he did kill her, it would be a crime of passion because he absolutely loved her.

In his interview, Stephan told Detective McClarnie Akia was supposed to meet with him the week she disappeared. What Stephan said next was intriguing. He was so worried about Akia, he let himself into her townhouse days before the baby shower, before anyone had reported her missing.

I went in and went to her room and all her stuff was gone. All her clothes was gone, the baby's crib was gone. And also I noticed like holes in the wall, like somebody was taking stuff out of her room.

Stephan said he found it all troubling, but not troubling enough to alert police or her family. Investigators looked deeper into Stephan and Akia's relationship.

When investigators looked at Stephan and Akia's Facebook exchanges, they discovered explicit and intimate messages. Stephan Foster and Akia Eggleston were having sexual relations. They're not boyfriend-girlfriend. This is friends with benefits. Yes.

Stefan Foster was in love with Akia, but Akia did not reciprocate the same feelings. That can create all kinds of things, which I know that you guys have seen before. Jealousy, anger, and sometimes rage. And murder. It could be, yes. Were you guys boyfriend and girlfriend? When I spoke with Stefan Foster, he insisted he and Akia were never really in it for the long haul. I didn't see myself being fully committed at that time.

I didn't see her being fully committed with me at that time either. Still, Stephan admitted he was hurt when he heard from someone else that Akia was pregnant. A little upset because it wasn't you or a little upset because you thought, you know, we're friends, you should be telling me. I want to say a little bit of both, to be honest, a little bit of both.

Then we got into a little argument about it. Were you ever angry enough at Akiya to hurt her? No, no. I wouldn't even hurt her five. As for his visit to Akiya's townhouse days before the baby shower. When you go to her house and you see that all the stuff's missing, you think about calling police? At that time, no. Because? I just decided, all right, I'm going to wait until the baby shower. And if I don't hear from her that I know something is wrong,

From the moment Akia went missing, Stefan said he was focused on helping the police investigation.

As police worked to confirm Stefan's alibi, their investigation continued into Akia's life and the people in it.

That would lead to someone who was not Akia's friend. Someone very, very angry with her. I know we gave you this opportunity. Right. That if you're honest with us, unless you killed her and I just don't think... What the f***? Oh my f***ing God. No. For Akia Eggleston's parents, not knowing was torture. It had been months since they'd seen or heard from their daughter. You've got to start now.

considering the possibility that she's not alive anymore. You're shaking your head. No.

That wasn't an option. Our faith in God was just so beyond. They wished Akia had shared more of her life with them. Maybe they would have a better idea of where to look for her. In an effort to generate leads, Angelique tried to get Akia's name on the local news, with no success. I had someone tell me she wasn't newsworthy. No one wanted to report on her story. It was just really difficult.

So Angelique turned to the Black and Missing Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to bringing awareness to missing persons of color, especially cases like Akia's that were not making headlines. We are voices for a voiceless group, and we want to make sure that the community is aware that 40% of the missing population are people of color, yet their cases are under the radar. Natalie and Derica Wilson are the co-founders of Black and Missing.

I initially spoke with Angelique. I'm guessing you could hear in her voice how desperate she was. Oh, absolutely. I can hear the desperation. I can hear the frustration. I can hear the sadness. And hearing Akia's story, we wanted to give that family hope.

They did that, pushing to get a Kia's story told by local newsrooms. The strategy is utilize media to apply pressure to law enforcement. That media pressure is what motivates them to add more resources to the case. We reached out to just about every local station in Baltimore.

And they were not open to covering it at first, but we kept pounding the pavement. There are still few clues in the 23-year-old's disappearance. By September 2017, four months after Akia went missing, her face was on every newscast in Baltimore. National media followed. Dateline featured Akia's story in our Missing in America series.

Investigators continued mining Akiya's social media and came up with their most promising lead yet. They discovered Akiya's relationship with Michael Robertson started out as an affair. He was in another relationship with a female by the name of Haley Pomeroy. And he had a child with her and was soon to have another child with her. And Haley is in love with Michael. But he couldn't stay away from Akiya. And he couldn't stop lying to her.

Or to Haley. What did Akia think of Michael Robertson? She was in love with him. This is a pretty classic love triangle here. Absolutely. She finds out about Akia and she loses it. And Haley has a temper, an extremely volatile temper. On Facebook, Haley's scorn for Akia was easy to see. She called Akia a homewrecker.

The stakes got a little bigger when, just three weeks before she disappeared, Akia posted a 3D sonogram of her baby. And when Haley sees it, she loses her mind because she took one look at the sonogram and said, that's Michael's baby. That's Michael's nose.

Investigators wanted to know if Haley's rage led to Akia's disappearance. They brought her in. We tell us everything that happened right now.

I think being interviewed by us was very emotional for her. She would be combative with us, then she would collapse and cry. Does she deny that she pretty much hated Akia? No.

She didn't deny that. Am I going to do anything to you? No. I mean, let's be quite honest. How the f*** am I going to... How? I don't have a vehicle. Nothing. Like, how? I don't even have the brain capacity to deal with that.

We would go pretty hard at Haley at one point, thinking she's going to tell us, and she didn't. So police let Haley walk. They hoped her cell phone records might ultimately show if she'd told the truth. But that kind of data would take months, sometimes years, to subpoena and analyze. We couldn't proceed forward without the results of those records.

Baltimore police were about to gain a powerful ally in their investigation, courtesy of Akia's aunt, Sanobia. Desperate for help, she had picked up the phone and called the FBI. I kept calling, I kept calling, and they eventually get me this lady named Summer. I got a phone call from a concerned relative of Akia Eggleston. FBI agent Summer Baugh.

Something made you want to get involved here. I heard the voice of her family member, and that was impactful. It turned out to be a good fit. Agent Baugh is an expert at analyzing social media and phone records. Akia had plenty of both, connecting her to dozens of people in the months before she went missing. If there was a record out there that could tell us what someone was saying, where they were located,

almost what they were thinking based on their communications, we were going after that. Veteran FBI agent Patrick Dugan also came on board. It appeared to me from the get-go that foul play was involved in one way, shape or form. In the United States, the leading cause of death for pregnant women isn't some medical complication. It's homicide. And while Faith may have kept her family's hope alive,

Investigators were no longer searching for Ikea. They were looking for her body. She stopped communicating with everybody else and because of the state of her pregnancy, she was not gonna walk out the front door and disappear into the sunset. That made her death all but certain. This is a case without a body. Right. And

DNA evidence recovered from clothing, from skin, from any sort of contact that a suspect may have with a victim. It's evidence that you always want to have. That slows everything down when you don't have that. Sure. Sure. 2017 came to an end. Then 2018. To Akia's family, it seemed police were not taking the case seriously. To us on the outside looking in, we just didn't see any movement, any traction.

Two years after Akia disappeared, Black and Missing booked Sean on The View, where he criticized the investigation. We're not going to stop badgering them until they give us what we want. There was a time when I think Sean thought we quit. You did not. No. It's just that we cannot share everything with the family as we're going through the investigation.

Over those years, investigators would interview more than 100 people and examine thousands of digital records. Bit by bit, they got closer to solving the mystery and finding the person they were looking for. Every time we would show him another piece of forensic evidence, yes, he would say, well, this definitely looks bad for me. And then I would say, and wait, it gets worse.

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In 2021, almost four years after Akia vanished, investigators believed they were finally close to getting answers about the day she died. They believed it happened May 3rd, 2017, four days before that baby shower. They even thought they could pinpoint the time she was killed, 5.22 p.m. She was mid-conversation.

when all of her social media stopped. And the last thing that she sent out was her baby shower invitation. And combined with phone records, that little morsel of digital truth gave investigators some clarity about the people they'd been looking at.

Where's Stephon at 522? He was seen at work, and he's there. He's in uniform. And his location data puts him at work as well. Where's Haley at 522? Haley is with her mother, taking care of her newborn baby and their already one-year-old daughter. Where's Michael Robertson at 522? Michael Robertson is in Akiya Eggleston's apartment, alone with Akiya. I can't hear.

Michael Robertson, Akiya's boyfriend, the man she was in love with, was the only person who could not be ruled out. I don't know where she is. Three days after Akiya vanished, Robertson abruptly changed his cell phone number. He also refused to speak with Akiya's parents and didn't join in the search for her, even though she was carrying a baby police believed was his. She's eight months pregnant with his son.

and he doesn't even search for his own son. He initially told investigators Akia had broken up with him, except Akia never mentioned that to anyone, just the opposite. Days before the baby shower, she texted friends saying she and Michael were moving in together. That bank visit, investigators say, was to get cash for a deposit on an apartment.

What Akia either didn't know or didn't want to think about was that Michael Robertson was the kind of man who uses and discards women. He already had several different children with several different girlfriends, and it seems he offered many of them little in the way of financial support. All of that makes Akia's decision not to tell her parents who she was involved with a little easier to understand.

On that final afternoon, Akia's phone records show she called Michael and then ordered a lift to drive him to her house. Maybe that's when he told her there'd be no apartment or that he was going back to Haley. And maybe that's when Akia Eggleston realized exactly what kind of man the father of her child was. Investigators believe a fight started. They think it ended quickly and violently.

They also believe Robertson's internet searches hinted at what he did afterward. Michael Robertson does like 18 Google searches where not just trash goes, but where does dumpster trash go? About 30 paces from Akia's house is this dumpster. The police theory is that Michael Robertson waited until dark, then carried Akia out.

She was less than five feet tall, and even with the baby, she weighed perhaps 120 pounds. We believe she was wrapped up in a blanket that probably came from her bed. Her dresser was also missing, and we believe that he jockeyed the dresser out of the apartment because there were holes in the wall. We also believe he used her dresser then to ultimately cover up her body. And she's gone before anybody starts looking for her. That's correct.

A compelling murder theory, one without a ton of evidence to back it up. Investigators really needed a confession. He looked different now. In the years since Akia's disappearance, Michael and Haley got back together, moved to Michigan, and had two more children. Now he was back in a police interrogation room, facing FBI agent Baugh and Baltimore detective Beauregard. We have spent years reconstructing

everybody's life that was involved, which is what led us here to you. First, Michael's breakup story. They told him they had proof that he saw a Kia two days after he claimed they had split. We know this because not only do we have the phone records to prove it, but we have the Lyft driver identifying you as the individual who

Okay, so now you're with Akia. You're at her place. She's at her place. What do you guys do that night? On the tape, he doesn't answer right away. He stares at the table. His head drops. And I think we were both holding our breath, waiting for him to admit it. And it is profound in that moment. The room is so silent, you could hear a pin drop. And when he picks up his head, he says...

That was the night we got into it. That's when we got into it. Which is an admission that they fought that night. Yes, in her bedroom. Robertson told them Akia stepped out of the shower and caught him texting Haley. That's when she drew a line. You can either be with me or be with her. But you can't have both of us. So I chose Haley. What could have happened to Akia when she stops...

sending messages at 5:22 p.m. and you're at the apartment. That's what doesn't make any sense. Nothing happened between us. Michael stood by his story despite all that circumstantial evidence. He didn't crack. You want me to explain against all of this and I can't. I can't. But I can't tell you what happened to her. I don't know. And I did not do anything to her.

Do you understand that these records are like DNA? Do you understand this? I didn't kill her. I didn't hit her. There was no accident. I didn't push her. I didn't bump into her and knock her in the street. I didn't do anything to her. There would be no confession. What there would be was a trial. Michael Robertson was charged with two counts of first-degree murder, one for Akia and one for her unborn son. His plea? Not guilty.

For prosecutors, this would be an uphill battle. They had no body, no fingerprints, no DNA. In fact, no proof a crime had occurred at all. You ever do a no body case before? No, sir. No one can truly be prepared for the place Akiya's family now found themselves because now they knew for sure she was gone. The hope was done. Every little hope that we had that we were going to find her was done after that.

Akia was presumed dead, but without a body and none of the evidence that comes from that. Michael Robertson was arrested for her murder, but it would be one tough case to prove. On a hot Baltimore summer day in July of 2023, Michael Robertson finally stood trial.

Kurt Bjorklund was lead prosecutor. You ever do a no-body case before? No, sir. A lot harder? Yes. In most murder cases, usually the body's on the scene. And that body normally tells you a story? You can learn a lot from the body. And most importantly, you know that they're dead. When there's a no-body case, for a lot of people, there's always that lingering thought, well, how can we actually prove that they're deceased? Bjorklund argued Akia would never have simply disappeared. Someone had clearly harmed her.

And what Bjorklund did have was the mountain of digital evidence carefully compiled by investigators over the years. The most damning of that was cell phone information from the hours just after Akia stopped posting on Facebook. One of the most compelling pieces of information we have is Akia's phone and Michael's phone moving together away from her apartment after the time when all of her communications stopped.

Investigators said cell phone tracking showed Michael left Akiya's house after killing her and took her phone to get rid of it. It was the one piece of evidence Michael Robertson could not even try to explain away. Here's why it gets worse, Michael. These are from back to Akiya's records. Akiya's phone, that she never uses again, is located downtown too. Oh, hell no.

It happened, Michael. These are maps of the records. I know. It is bad. He wasn't thinking about the fact that her phone could be tracked even though she wasn't alive anymore. Because he never expected us to outsmart him. In court, Kurt Bjorklund told the jury it was the investigators who'd outsmarted Michael.

It can only be him, and that's just looking at the cell phone evidence, the cell site evidence. You presented this as a kind of an emotional crescendo for him. Like this love triangle had reached a kind of a breaking point. Yes. Imagine the weight upon Michael Robertson. This is what finally got him to do this. He couldn't find a way to extricate himself from the situation. Haley was putting pressure on him. Akia was putting pressure on him. And his lies were going to catch up to him.

People commit heinous acts when they're desperate. He cracked. It was too much for him to handle. And that's why he planned to do this.

Robertson's attorney, Jason Rodriguez, took issue with the whole case, arguing there was no evidence any crime had been committed. You think there's the slightest chance that Aki Eggleston is still alive? I very much hope so. I think... Well, I very much hope so, but I don't think she is. You know, unlike most cases, no one's able to have that ultimate certainty that there normally is. Because there's no body. Correct. Not only no body, but there was no trace evidence of a body.

Rodriguez also argued others might have had a motive to kill Akia. The defense tried to make a suspect out of Stephan. They tried. There was no evidence of that. Even so, a prosecutor's confidence can never forecast a jury's verdict. As the case winds down and the jury has it, what'd you think? It was tough. It was tough. The trial was three and a half weeks long.

Just being there every day, I felt like I was being tortured. After two days of deliberation and six years since Akia failed to show up at her own baby shower, the jury came back. Michael Robertson was found guilty on two counts of first-degree murder. They came back with a guilty verdict, and it was like a sigh of relief for that one moment. But still, we don't have Akia. The weight is still there. Yeah. Yeah.

Stephanie's still awake there. As final resting places go, no one should wind up here, a landfill in northern Virginia. Investigators say this is where Akiya's journey ended, after Robertson put her in the dumpster by her house. It's now too unsafe to excavate. Akiya and her unborn son will forever remain missing. That's something Stephanie will always struggle with.

Akiya's family learns the same lesson every day as they walk out of their home, past this yellow ribbon, a reminder that Akiya's still not here.

She's still part of your family. Oh, she's absolutely part of the family. They're still looking back at what they didn't know, what they weren't told, the warnings that exist now only in hindsight. Parents, know your children. Children, don't be afraid to talk to your parents. Love on each other and never be afraid to say the truth. Because if you knew the truth, you'd still have your daughter. Yeah, absolutely. And that's the truth.

That's all for this edition of Dateline. And check out our Talking Dateline podcast. Josh Mankiewicz and Keith Morrison will go behind the scenes of tonight's episode, available Wednesday in the Dateline feed wherever you get your podcasts. We'll see you again next Friday at 10, 9 central. I'm Lester Holt. For all of us at NBC News, good night.

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