FLAT ROCK, Mich. – Kellie James describes her sister, Kassandra Merrow, 56, as “funny, witty,” and “very smart,” but she hasn’t seen her face or heard her laugh for over seven years.
Merrow disappeared in June 2019 from Flat Rock. She was last seen at the Baymont by Wyndham Hotel on Commerce Drive on June 7.
James said her sister spent the night at the hotel before she disappeared.
“She didn’t have money -- she didn’t have a lot of things,” James said. “But she’d do anything for you.”
‘Something’s not right -- I felt it’
Merrow’s disappearance still hangs over her family, especially her daughter Miranda, James said. Merrow also has two grandchildren, including one who was still a baby when Merrow vanished.
“I need her more than anything. Her daughter needs her. We miss her,” James said. “There was no way -- no way, nowhere near possible -- would she have left that baby and Miranda.”
James said she felt something was wrong almost immediately after she stopped hearing from her sister.
“Something’s not right -- I felt it,” she said.
James said Merrow struggled with substance abuse and had been in mental health treatment but said she believed her sister had been stable for years before 2019.
On June 6, 2019, a day after Merrow was released from a mental health facility, James said Merrow relapsed. James said she put her up in a hotel in Flat Rock, planning to take her back to rehab the next morning.
James said she also tried to get Merrow into an intake program at a hospital in Wyandotte.
“She’s calling, she’s like, ‘I don’t really wanna go.’ I’m like, ‘You don’t have a choice.’ She goes, ‘All right,’” James said.
But when James stepped out to get coffee, she said Merrow disappeared.
James said she tried calling Merrow and checked places nearby, including a gas station. Later, she learned Merrow had been there all along.
“She actually was in that gas station hiding,” James said.
James said she saw her sister on social media the next day. After that, she said, there was nothing -- no calls, no answers, no sign of Merrow’s whereabouts.
A month later, as Merrow’s birthday came and went on July 6, the family reported her missing. James, speaking with Miranda, said they all knew something was wrong.
“I go, ‘Something’s not right. I haven’t heard from your mother. Have you heard from your mother?’”
Miranda hadn’t either.
In the months and years that followed, James said she chased leads herself -- calling hospitals, morgues, and eventually hiring a private investigator when she felt the case wasn’t moving forward.
“Months went by -- it was October. I hired a PI,” she said.
James said the investigator later found her sister’s belongings in the woods behind the hotel where James had paid for her to stay that night she disappeared.
“We found her phone, we found her medication, we found her clothes,” James said.
Horrific tips from strangers
Then came the calls James says no family should ever get. She said strangers began offering tips after she left her personal information on flyers. The tips described stories of Merrow being killed, dismembered and burned.
“I pray to God that never happened, James said. “Why would someone say sh*t like that? That’s sick.”
James said she still has nightmares wondering what happened to her sister, and she scans the faces of strangers wondering if one of them might be her.
“I look at all these homeless women and all these people walking the streets and I take a double take,” she said. “My husband’s like, ‘What are you looking for?’ I’m like, ‘Slow down, slow down.’ I’m like, ‘That lady right there…’”
For James, the hardest part, though, is the silence.
“It’s the not knowing,” she said. “It’s the not knowing that’s driving me crazy.”
Merrow is described as a white female with brown hair and brown eyes. She has tattoos of a winking eye on her right knee, a skull on her shoulder and a Husky dog on her back.
At the time of her disappearance, her hair may have been dyed blonde with purple or pink highlights. She may use the name Kassie James.
Anyone with information is asked to call the Flat Rock Police Department at 734-782-2496 or Crime Stoppers at 1-800-SPEAK-UP.
More: Missing in Michigan