Three-year-old Ramona Brown lived with her parents and her nine brothers and sisters in a house on Memorial Park Drive in Algiers. On the night of March 6, 1984, a fire swept through the family’s home.
And then Ramona disappeared.
Neighbor Gary Olson remembered waking up to the blaze.
“There was a big knock on the front door and the lady from next door was hollering and crying, ‘I need help, I need help! My babies are inside!’" Olson said. "And I went out to look and by the time I went to the corner of the house… it was nothing, I couldn’t get a hose or anything, so I ran back inside and called 911.”
Two of Ramona's brothers died, and the house was destroyed. Ramona, meanwhile, was nowhere to be found. Investigators looked through the ashes and wreckage for days and searched the neighborhood for Ramona, but she was never located.
Now the Vault Studios podcast “True Crime Chronicles” is sharing the story of Ramona's disappearance and her family’s hope that someday she might return back home. The podcast will release an episode on Monday focused on the search for Ramona.
You can download and subscribe to True Crime Chronicles on any podcast platform, including Google Play, Spotify, Stitcher and Apple Podcasts. You'll also be able to listen to Monday's episode in the player below after it is released.
WWL investigative reporter and anchor Katie Moore said it’s possible Ramona died in the fire, but it's unlikely that her remains would have completely burned to ashes.
“There very likely would have been bone fragments left. It’s like when you cremate someone’s remains in a crematory. There’s still bits and pieces of people’s bones that are left," Moore said. "Bone fragments and things that they should have been able to find especially given that they thought they knew where Ramona was sleeping and all that.”
Ramona’s young sister said she saw an elderly couple helping the 3-year old into their car as the family home burned to the ground. There also was a strange phone call to Ramona’s grandmother in the days after the fire.
Listen to "True Crime Chronicles" for more on this story.