Remains of missing woman discovered in hidden grave decades later

It has been more than two decades since 34-year-old Kim Langwell disappeared and former Beaumont, Texas, Detective Joe Ball still relives those early days of the investigation over and over again.

Det. Joe Ball: This case, even after I retired … This case has haunted me because I couldn’t find her.

Det. Joe Ball:  I felt like I had failed  (emotional).

Peter Van Sant: And you felt that you failed the family?

Det. Joe Ball: Yes. And her.

On July 10, 1999, a day after Kim Langwell failed to arrive home, Ball was summoned to a strip mall parking lot in front of an Eckerd Pharmacy.

Tiffani McInnis: My mom’s car is there and nobody’s checked it out. We need to see what’s in the car.

Kim’s daughter, Tiffani McInnis, who was just 15 at the time, and Kim’s sister, Susan Butts, had already arrived at the scene.

Peter Van Sant: When you looked through the window, what did you see in the car?

Tiffani McInnis: No purse, no wallet, no keys.

Susan Butts: Yeah, no, the purse was not in there.

Susan Butts: The car was locked.

Peter Van Sant: No keys inside?

Susan Butts: No nothing. … It just looked like somebody walked away.

Peter Van Sant (in the parking lot): This is where Kim’s vehicle was.

Det. Joe Ball: This is where Kim’s vehicle was parked.

Peter Van Sant: And what did that suggest to you?

Det. Joe Ball: It suggested to me that she either met someone here and left with them or that she had been kidnapped out of this parking lot.

But no one could recall seeing anyone get in or out of Kim’s car.

Tiffani McInnis: No purse, no wallet, no keys.

Esther Randall: I do know that they said to me, maybe she just went off. Maybe she just had started a new life. And left her child? No she didn’t. She didn’t do that.

Esther Randall was like a second mom to Kim, who called her “Mimi.”

Esther Randall: I thought of her as my own. … We adored her. She was easy to love. She was fun.

Tiffani McInnis: She was an amazing mom. She had me at a very young age, but she treated me like I was everything.

It became clear to Ball that Kim would never abandon her only child.

Det. Joe Ball: I was pretty sure that something had happened to her.