VIVIAN, La. — The last time Martha Mullins heard her daughter’s voice was the day before she went missing.
On Jan. 21, 2020, Kevan McCathran came home to find his wife missing. Dorothy “Dottie” Yates-McCathran, 42, disappeared without a trace leaving behind her purse and ID.
“If you are going to go somewhere you usually take your driver’s license, or your purse, or whatever girls take,” said Chester Mullins, the woman's stepfather.
“She never went anywhere without her make-up,” her mother added.
The day before Dottie’s disappearance, Martha Mullins spoke to her on the phone. She said Dottie was upset because she was unable to travel the 40 minutes from her home in Vivian to Shreveport to see her daughter’s sixth birthday. During the phone call on Jan. 20, 2020, Dottie expressed her sadness that she wasn’t able to be there but promised the little girl she’d be at the birthday party on Jan. 26.
She never made it.
“On Saturday she didn’t show up for her daughter’s birthday party. Which we all knew that was a big deal that she wasn’t there,” Martha Mullins said.
Martha Mullins had already informed the Caddo Parish Sheriff’s Office of her daughter's disappearance on Thursday, Jan. 23, and called back on Sunday after she did not show up to the party.
“On Sunday I called the detective and said she didn’t come home,” Mullins said. “He said ‘Oh I knew you were just going to call and tell me she was already home, I figured she was already back.’”
Dottie was officially reported missing on Monday, Jan. 27.
Dottie’s husband of seven years, Kevan McCathran, told law enforcement and Dottie’s family he went to work Jan. 21 and when he returned Dottie was nowhere to be found.
In recent months, Martha Mullins has received new details in the case.
Dottie supposedly called a friend (who asked to not be named) the day she went missing.
“This information just came available to me within the last six months,” Martha said.
The friend told Dottie's mother that on Jan. 21, 2020, at 3:45 p.m. the missing woman had called her. During that phone call, the friend said Dottie said that she and her husband had been fighting and she really needed to get away. She was asking for a job that her friend had been offered at a restaurant, Mullins said.
“She was talking to this woman on the phone, and somebody walked in on her. We don’t know who, but she had been crying when she was talking to this woman but when whoever walked in, she pulled herself together and just said hi,” she said.
Dottie continued the conversation with the woman on the phone after the unknown individual walked in.
“Hi was the last person that saw her alive,” Mullins said.
Mullins said she has given the information to detectives but no further information has been provided.
Sheriff’s Detective Matt Purgerson said in the two-year anniversary press release, “an investigation by the Caddo Sheriff’s Office has turned up no significant leads.”
Dottie’s family has raised $30,000 for a reward and has hired a private detective.
“We are stuck we can’t lose hope, but it just looks like there is no end coming and we can’t go ahead and grieve and go through the process to move on because we still don’t know,” Martha Mullins said.
The Shreveport Times has reached out to Kevan McCathran for comment but has not received a response.
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