32-year-old Robby Ann Hughes Floyd, her 17-year-old sister Jennifer Jane Hughes, and her children, Sarena Natoya Glenn, age 11, and 4-year-old twins Brent Nicholas Hughes and Brenttany Nicole Hughes, all dropped of sight in Fayetteville, North Carolina in December 1996 — almost twenty years ago. Both twins had a heart condition that needed treatment. Because Robby didn’t keep in regular touch with her family, they all weren’t reported missing until August 1998, almost two years later.
This is one of the casefiles on Charley that was researched and written by my predecessor, Jennifer Marra, of Doe Network and MPCCN fame; I haven’t contributed much to it.
There is some question as to whether they’re actually missing or not. They had been on the NCMEC but they’re not anymore; they’re not currently listed on NamUs and I don’t think they ever were. Furthermore, there’s a 2004 article about them headlined “Missing family is not missing”, which says Robby used several alias names and was wanted for writing bad checks. The article also says Sarena called her father in 1998 and contacted another relative in 1999. The police concluded the family was simply hiding out, perhaps in Alabama.
However… the WRAL television station ran a piece on the family in 2011, seven years after the previous article I mentioned, that said they ARE missing:
“We’ve checked activity on their social security numbers and there’s no activity,” said Lt. Jimmy Black of the Cumberland County Sheriff’s Office. “No schools have called for their records. It’s as if they don’t exist anymore.”
That’s where the matter rests, as far as I can tell. I haven’t been able to find any more recent press coverage. But it boggles my mind how an entire family can disappear so completely, and how it wasn’t even noticed for quite some time.
So what happened? Let’s talk about it.
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