(WWJ) – Monday, Dec. 11 marks 29 years since 4-year-old D'Wan Sims was reported missing.
His mother, Dwanna Wiggins, told police she had taken him to Wonderland Mall in Livonia to get a Power Rangers toy, but he was kidnapped while they were shopping. Police officials say surveillance video never showed the mom and child together at the mall, leaving more mysteries than answers surrounding the case.
On a new Daily J podcast, WWJ's Zach Clark takes a look at the nearly three-decade-old case, learning that investigators have never given up hope that he may be alive.
Detroit historian and journalist Ken Coleman says 29 years later many are still fascinated with the case.
"I think people draw a connection to it because there's a certain human element, obviously, to the missing person case — a 4-year-old boy being at a bustling shopping mall just a few weeks before Christmas, imagining what that would feel like," Coleman said.
John Bischoff with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children says in the last year alone, his division has been asked to assist on roughly 30,000 cases involving missing children. Nationally, the number of children who are reported missing could be around 300,000, though many of them are found very quickly.
But Sims' case is among many that span decades.
"We do have those cases that occur from time to time. Heartbreaking and unfortunate. We need the public's help here to drive leads and new information in the search for D'Wan," Bischoff said.
While he remains missing 29 years later, Sims' case has been revisited many times over that period. Most recently, a man came forward in 2019, telling authorities he believed he may be D'Wan sims. DNA testing came back negative two years later.
Wiggins died in 2020. Given she was never seen on surveillance video with her son at the mall and that she reportedly failed two polygraph tests after his disappearance, the general suspicion was that she knew something more than she had told authorities.
"With that case, answers possibly went away with her when she went away, and that's unfortunate," Bischoff said. "But the good news across the board for every missing child case is that technology keeps getting better and better. We have forensic tools at our fingertips today that we couldn't have even dreamt of in 1994."
That's why Bischoff says investigators still have hope of finding him.
"We've seen it proven too many times where people who've gone missing as children [are] found alive and well today. And that's what helps us as an organization keep help alive," he said.
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