RICHMOND, Va. -- In November 2000, during the week of Thanksgiving, is the last time anyone in Brenda Gee Knight's family saw her alive.
The hairstylist, known to roam as she was plugged into the community, often traveled due to her hair business.
The special agent in charge believes someone watching Knight's story has information that can help bring Diamond Johnston and the rest of her family some much-needed closure.
"Wonderful with hair. I mean, she traveled, she'd been in hair shows. She's won third place in 13 places. I mean, she's been all over London and stuff. And you know at times people do go through things in their life that change their course. That's what happened with my sister," Karen Gee said.
Brenda was 34 at the time of her disappearance.
She had three daughters.
"The last day that she was seen, she was dropped off by her youngest sister Lauri Gee on Jefferson Davis Highway. She's supposed to be going to a friend's house," eldest daughter Diamond Johnston said. "She was well known; she was a good person. That hurts a lot to know that my mom wasn't there for the birth of my kids. I graduated from high school, you name it, all the big accomplishments that I did. She will not be forgotten. I'm going to figure it out. I figured out who she was when she was a Jane Doe. And I'm going to figure out who killed her."
Knight's remains were discovered by a kayaker on the Mattaponi River near the King & Queen/King William County line in June 2001.
At that time, she was listed as "Mattaponi River lady" because there was no DNA in the system to help identify her.
"The person who dumped her body there was likely to have some knowledge of that location," Angela Witt, the Virginia State Police Agent assigned to Knight's cold case, said.
"My mom didn't deserve to have her body thrown away like trash," Johnston said.
Knight wasn't officially listed as missing in law enforcement databases until 2004.
Word on the street began to spread and Knight's mother went to the police and filed the report.
Brenda Gee Knight did have a history of prostitution and drug use.
It's been confirmed by investigators that she acted as a confidential informant for the Richmond Police Department.
When Knight disappeared, she had been released from jail in April.
According to court documents she was released 10 months early for good behavior, after serving time for failing to complete a drug program.
"I printed off a flyer of my mom when I was searching for her. I started in the end of 2011, beginning of 2012," Johnston said.
Now an adult, Knight's daughter was on a mission to find her mom.
Bones that had been found entangled in debris on the Mattaponi were in fact the remains of Brenda Gee Knight.
"Of course, we didn't know who the remains belonged to so they were sent to the Smithsonian and the date range they gave us was about five years as they believe the bones had been in the water. So, when the press releases were done initially, it said yeah, they've been missing about five years. And Diamond told me that her mom said that can't be Brenda. One, she would have never gone that far from home, all the way out to King & Queen County. And two, it didn't fit the timeframe when the family had last seen her which was the day before Thanksgiving in 2000," Witt said.
Diamond submitted her DNA about a decade after her mom disappeared and there was a match.
Mattaponi River lady now had a name, it was Brenda Gee Knight.
Nearly 22 years after she disappeared, the Reopen the Case Foundation along with family and investigators are shedding light on this unsolved murder mystery with hopes of finding Knight's killer.
"It's our opinion that if this is where she was put into the river that she was likely with the least expenditure of energy by the person who dumped her would likely have just tossed her over the side of the bridge into the water," Witt said. "But it's documented that there had been several flooding events that had occurred. In the recent months leading up to the discovery, we do have a belief that the person who dumped the body probably had some knowledge of that roadway in that area."
