Cold Case of Aundria Brown Lt. Mike Brown joined the Allegan County Sheriff's office in 1999, ten years after Aundria Brown was reported missing by her father. In 2009, a cold case team was formed to look into the Brown case. When the original case detectives started to retire in 2019, the team felt a sense of urgency to resolve the case. WMU has a service to review case files for law enforcement. This review led to questions about leads not followed.
Dennis Brown served in the US Navy and then the Naval Reserve after moving to Michigan. In 1974, he and his wife adopted the infant they named Aundria. On March 11, 1989, Dennis reported Aundra missing. A truancy officer visited the home, and Dennis reported that he and Aundria had a fight and she ran away. She had done this before and no major investigation of the home was performed. There were reported sightings of Aundra through October of 1989. The sheriff continued to treat this as a missing persons case. The cold case team uncovered that Brown had a 1980 Criminal Sexual Conduct case, a 1989 abduction, and a 1998 break-in of a co-worker's home. Aundra's birth mother started helping the team and worked on generating publicity. Nationwide databases were starting to be available, and Aundra's DNA and dental records were recorded. Dennis was interviewed by the team in 2013 without them learning much new or getting him to admit anything. The team kept a cup from which Dennis drank and extracted his DNA. This evidence was inadmissible in court, but proved invaluable. The Big Break |
