20 years after disappearance, family honors teen’s life
WHITE CLOUD, Mich. (WOOD) — “Twenty years gone and still not a moment forgotten,” Amanda Lankey’s mom and loved ones said tearfully during a memorial service Saturday.
Amanda was 13 years old in 2004 when she disappeared from a friend’s house in Newaygo County during a sleepover. Amanda and her family were in town from Florida, and her mom, Victoria Foster, said she had spent the night with this friend dozens of times.
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“The home we thought she was safe in wasn’t. It wasn’t safe at all,” Foster said.
The morning after, when Foster went to pick up her daughter, all she was told was that Amanda was no longer there.
“She was not there. Her clothes, her shoes, her money — everything was there except for her,” Foster said.
Police initially classified Amanda as a runaway, but Foster knew her daughter would never have run off.
“Not only was I petrified as the days went by because nobody had heard from her, nobody had seen her, I just kept getting madder and madder and madder because I couldn’t get any help,” Foster said. “And then finally the help came, and it was too late. It was too late.”
Amanda’s badly beaten body was found two weeks later by mushroom hunters in the Manistee National Forest. While no one was ever charged in connection with Amanda’s death, police named Cecil Wallis Sr. as a person of interest in her death years later. He was the stepfather of the friend whose house Amanda had stayed the night at when she disappeared. He died by suicide before the prosecutor could file charges.
“I know the man who did this is gone. I know that and that he can’t hurt anybody else, but there’s so many more people out here just like him,” Foster said. “I don’t want that to happen to anybody else’s kid or grandkid.”
Since her daughter’s death, Foster has worked tirelessly with local law enforcement and lawmakers to reclassify missing teens.
“No child should ever be classified as a runaway. Even if they are a runaway, there’s a problem,” she said.
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Every year on the anniversary of the day Amanda went missing, loved ones gather at the very park Amanda used to play at to honor her short life. This year, family and friends threw flowers into a nearby stream in honor of Amanda.
“All of her family, her nieces and nephews that she never got to see, they’re all here today to celebrate her,” Foster said.
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