INDIANAPOLIS — In a world where just about everyone has a cell phone these days, Sharon Livingston also holds onto the wired telephone line she's had in her west Indianapolis home for close to 40 years.
It's not because Sharon ever uses it to make any calls, but because of the one call she's hoped over the past 30 years would finally come.
"When Allen disappeared, there was only a landline. That's the only number he knew because there was no cell phone,” Sharon said.
She's talking about her son, Allen, who disappeared the summer of 1993, one month before his 28th birthday.
"He was always happy and he never had a bad word to say about anybody. He was just a wonderful person,” she said.
Sharon said he wasn’t the kind of son who didn't call or visit. That's why when she and her partner, Judy, hadn't heard from Allen in several days and couldn't find him, they reported him missing.
Nearly three decades later, they still have the card with the case number police gave them when they filed the report.
"I figured I should hold onto this because eventually it might come back or they might find something and I would still have the case number," Sharon said.
Three years later, while investigating the disappearance of several Indianapolis men from the gay community, police discovered the remains of 11 men on a Westfield farm. Police believed the men were the victims of the person who lived there - suspected serial killer Herb Baumeister.
Allen's remains were not identified among them, but all these years later, Sharon believes there is a connection.
"I know he's there," she said. "I know he's there. I know that man got him. I just know it. I feel that. I know.”
But she needs to know for sure. Sharon said she is ill and time is not necessarily on her side.
"Time's running out, so I need closure, absolutely. I'm 76 years old. Even without cancer, I'm not going to live forever,” said Sharon.
That's why Sharon's nephew called the Hamilton County Coroner's Office a few months ago, asking what could be done.
That phone call led coroner-elect Jeff Jellison to reopen the case, calling for families with male loved ones who went missing from the mid-1980s to early 1990s to submit DNA in the hopes police could identify them in some of the more than 10,000 bones and bone fragments excavated from the Baumeister property.
The University of Indianapolis has held onto the remains all these years. The farm's current owner has added to that number each time he's found more bones, too. Earlier this month, cadaver dogs identified several places of interest on the property where more remains could still be buried.
"I'm pretty sure they're going to find him. I just know they are,” Sharon said.
Her mother's intuition is fueled by her hope to finally know the truth about her son's fate.
"I do not have my son's remains, and until I have that, it will be unfinished for me and I hope I get them before I pass away,” Sharon said.
"It's already been over 20 years that this has been going on and we don't have another 20 years. We're already in our 70s so with her health problems and my health problems, between the two of us, we don't have another 20 years,” Judy added.
"I need closure before I go,” said Sharon.
In that search for closure, she believes other families may get the answers they've wanted all these years, too. Sharon knows she won't be able to rest well until she does.