SHREWSBURY, Mo. — There is a somber tradition of sorts for every newly minted member of the Shrewsbury Police Department's Detective Bureau.
They get the same set of three three-inch binders plopped on their desk.
It contains all of the information and leads detectives who have come before them pursued in their quest to find out what happened to Nancy Brannon.
The 34-year-old left a bar the night of Nov. 25, 1986, and was never seen or heard from again.
“We always tell them to look through this report and see if there is anything you think we should do,” said Lt. Todd Melugin, commander of the detective bureau.
He put in his time pouring over the binders when he became a detective 20 years ago.
So far, no one has come up with any other angles to pursue. But the passage of time has shaken loose another potential lead from Brannon’s family members that the I-Team brought to the attention of the police department.
Her nieces said the aunt they barely remember may have been having an affair with a married coworker when she disappeared -- and she might have been pregnant.
“She was dating a guy who was married and building a house,” said Melissa Daus, who was 7 years old when the aunt she remembers as being the best at having sleepovers seemingly vanished. “I think if she was pregnant, that guy had a lot to lose.”
Retracing her last known steps
Nancy Brannon was the oldest of six siblings, which included five girls and one boy.
Her brother’s daughter, Melissa, remembers her aunt Nancy having the best sleepover parties for her and her sister at the apartment complex where she lived in Shrewsbury.
She looked up to her aunt, a single woman working as an administrator for the former St. Louis Eye Hospital in the 3700 block of Delor Street.
On the night in question, Nancy Brannon went to the former Half Time Saloon, now the site of an adult daycare center. She was driving a gold 1984 Dodge Charger. Friends she was with that night told police she left by herself sometime after 10 p.m.
The next morning, a neighbor found Nancy’s purse stashed underneath a bush behind her car, Melugin said. Everything was in it: credit cards, cash, her car keys and a new package of birth control pills – a prescription that had been filled that day.
Her car was locked. She didn’t show up for work.
Her father soon went inside his daughter’s apartment. The bed was still made.
“Something happened from the car to the apartment,” said Lyndsey Adams, who was just a few months old when her mother’s sister seemingly vanished.
News coverage was intense.
The search for missing family member begins
“I remember even as a kid being 7 years old, our family was on the news every night for the first few weeks, maybe even months,” said Melissa Daus, whose father was Nancy Brannon’s only brother. “I remember walking around putting fliers on light posts outside of her area where she lived.”
Soon, months turned into years.
The disappearance fractured some in the family.
Holidays were never the same, as Nancy’s disappearance happened so close to Thanksgiving and Christmas.
Nancy’s father died about 10 years later.
“He was never the same,” Daus said. “The will to live was just gone.
“I think after 10 years with nothing, it was just hard to overcome that.”
Daus said she’s felt the impact of her aunt’s disappearance all her life.
“I know my dad always had in his head, ‘She wasn't 7 years old. She wasn’t 15 years old. She was 34 years old. She was independent. She was successful and something bad still happened to her. So if it can happen to her, it can happen to anyone,’” she said. “And that's kind of the fear we grew up thinking.”
Adams doesn’t remember a time when the holidays weren’t difficult for her family. She’s 37 years old – and her first Christmas was her family’s first Christmas without Nancy.
“We still do things that to think about her and remember her around the holidays,” Daus said, noting that someone in the family makes a pecan pie for Christmas because it was Nancy’s favorite.
“Some of the last friends that she was with that night still come to our Thanksgiving and our Christmas like they’re part of our family, too,” Adams said.
Shrewsbury's only cold case
The cousins have now made it their life’s mission to solve their aunt’s disappearance.
In 2019, Dateline wrote an online article about the case after Daus sent a letter to the show hoping her aunt’s case could get some attention.
Since then, details from the past have begun to surface – details the women believe their aunt might have been ashamed of and others could have kept hidden to protect Nancy’s parents. They believe their aunt was having an affair with a married coworker. And, based on the timing of her birth control pills, they also believe she could have been pregnant.
Shrewsbury police interviewed the coworker in question following Nancy’s disappearance, Melugin said.
He had an alibi for the night in question: His wife, Melugin, said.
The I-Team emailed the coworker’s wife, along with several other people asking if she ever knew Nancy or worked with her, and recall any details to help bring her family closure. She denied ever knowing Nancy, and told the I-Team it had been given “erroneous information.”
Her husband responded to an email from the I-Team, stating: “I would refer you to the Shrewsbury Police Department interview that they conducted with me after Nancy's disappearance. It was a very thorough interview, and I do not feel that I have anything that I would add to it.”
The coworker’s statements to police all those years ago are not public records, as the investigation is still open. 5 On Your Side is not naming the couple as they have not been charged with any crime.
Melugin told the I-Team he did not know Nancy could have been having an affair, or a relationship with anyone at the time of her disappearance. And he had not heard she could have been pregnant.
“Nobody ever mentioned a boyfriend,” Melugin said.
It’s a detail that hasn’t been recorded in those binders – until now.
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