It’s been more than two years since Megan Lancaster’s family has seen her, and now police in central Ohio are investigating a possible link between her case and several other women who have gone missing.
"We've had other family members scream at us, ‘She's gone. She's dead. Get over it, go on.’ And we can't. We have to know what happened to her. We want to put a rest to this. Not just her, to all of these missing women," Kadie Lancaster, Megan’s siser-in-law, told 10TV.
According to Megan’s family, she had fallen into a life of drugs and addiction before she vanished. Her car was found abandoned on April 3rd, 2013 in the parking lot of a Portsmouth, Ohio fast food restaurant. Megan, who was 25 when she disappeared, left behind a young son. “You look at the little boy, and you can’t help but keep fighting. She would not have left on her own,” Kadie said.
Police and the FBI are now reportedly searching for similarities between Lancaster’s disappearance and the cases of several other women who have also gone missing over the past two years.
Timberly Claytor, 38, and Tameka Lynch, 30, were both found dead after going missing from Ross County while Tiffany Sayre, 26, Wanda Lemons, 37, and Charlotte Trego, 29, are all still missing from that same area. Two other women, Holly Logan, 29, and Jayme Bowen, 23, are missing from nearby Franklin County. Jayme Bowen was featured in Dateline’s ‘Missing in America’ series in December.
According to NBC4, officials in Ross County announced on June 2nd they have named Jason McCrary a prime suspect in the death of Timberly Claytor, whose body was found on May 29th, 2015.
When asked at a press conference last week if there was a possible serial killer in the area, Matthew Schmidt, Ross County Prosecutor, said they are looking at that possibility. “That is a possibility we have not ruled out. We do not want to jump to that conclusion because it is possible some or all of these missing persons are independent of one another.”
According to Erick Bellomy, founder of local missing person’s group Jayme’s Message, several of the women attended the same rehab center and ran in the same crowd. "The rehab center in Scioto County is connected not only with Jayme Bowen's case, but down in Portsmouth with Megan Lancaster's case and in Ross County with Charlotte Trego's case," Bellomy told NBC4 last week.
A recently formed task force in Chillicothe, Ohio is now working with the FBI looking for any possible similarities between several of the cases. Although investigators haven’t confirmed there is a connection between any of them, they do say some of the women have places and people in common.
Kadie Lancaster, Megan’s sister-in-law, said she believes there is a connection between all the disappearances. “They're not disposable. They are human beings,” Kadie told 10TV.
Megan Lancaster is described as 5’6” tall, weighing 110 lbs. with blonde hair. If you have any information about Megan’s disappearance or any of the other women mentioned, please contact the Portsmouth Police Department at (740) 353-4101 or the Chillicothe Police Department at (740) 773-1191.