WALLINGFORD — Doreen Vincent was only 12 when she disappeared from her home, 1316 Whirlwind Hill Road, in Wallingford, Connecticut. She had lived there for only 10 days, having just moved in with her father, Mark and stepmother, Sharon. She was not happy about the move, being upset at the ruralness of Wallingford and being away from her friends in Bridgeport.

Doreen disappeared sometime between 8 and 9 o’clock on the night of June 15, 1988. She had gotten into an argument with her father after which she, according to him, grabbed some clothes and money and left.

Mark also would say that he just simply saw her at 8 p.m. when he headed into his workshop, and then, at 9 p.m., popped into her bedroom at which point he found her missing.

Whatever truly happened, he didn’t tell anybody about Doreen being gone until 11:30 when Sharon returned home from church. Even then it would take 3 more days for him to report her missing due in part to Doreen having run away and hitchhiked to her mother’s home previously.

On June 17, Doreen’s mother, Donna Lee, was supposed to pick her up. Donna would call them although she received no response due to Mark having taken the phone off the wall. On the 18th, Donna went over to their home, where Mark, according to CT Insider, tried to tell Donna that Doreen was at her mother’s house.

It was only then that Donna realized that Doreen was missing.

Mark reportedly seemed unbothered by her disappearance and only agreed to report her as missing after Donna insisted.

Initially, due to the previous instance of having run away, law enforcement believed that Doreen had run away, again. This would change after several concerning revelations came to light, namely about Mark.

Mark reportedly had a violent temper and had even admitted to having pushed Doreen into a window, breaking it. On top of this, Sharon would eventually come forward and admit that she didn’t believe her husband’s story as to what had happened because their door had a deadbolt, making it only openable from the inside with a key.

Sharon and Mark would separate later that summer with Mark moving out. He did not leave a mailing address with police and, as a result, they could not locate him for a period.

About a year after Doreen’s vanishing, police would search Lorraine Vincent’s, Mark’s mother and Doreen’s grandmother, home where they would find several items Mark had claimed Doreen had taken with her. Mark had gone to Lorraine’s home some days after Doreen had disappeared, and did not tell her of the disappearance.

There was one item found at Lorraine’s home that was more concerning than the others. A gun, registered to Sharon, yet not in her possession. Mark would end up being sentenced to two years in jail for illegal firearm possession after the gun was located.

Mark was, at the time, not the main suspect. That title would go to a man named Hadden Clark who had been convicted of murdering both a young woman and a six year old girl while also claiming to have stolen the life of nine others across the east coast.

Unfortunately police are still unsure if Clark was involved in the disappearance and he has not been convicted of any other murders.

“There are a lot of challenges that occur in missing person cases,” said Officer Rich Marsh, a Woodbury police officer, “one of which is the lack of assistance we get from outside agencies that have information that would be helpful. Banks and credit card companies generally will not give us information about missing person’s accounts unless we have a search warrant, a process that is cumbersome and can take a couple of hours depending on the time of day. Cell phone technology is great and cellular carriers will ping cellular phones for us (a process which tracks a user’s location via their cellular phone), but the cellular phone must be powered on and oftentimes the location is within a 1,000-meter radius of a particular cell tower.”

The other two suspects in Doreen’s disappearance are her father and a unnamed family member who had been charged with pedophilia.

Donna and Mark claim to have searched for Doreen in Bridgeport, New Haven and New York, according to CT Insider. Police did their own searching with dogs within a large park in Bethel, located near Huntington State Park as Doreen was reportedly seen there after her disappearance. Mark claims, though, that he can prove she wasn’t there.

“Social media companies that may also have information also will not get us information without a search warrant,” says Marsh. “Many of the social media companies only deal with information through email or their own online portals and oftentimes there is no way to speed up the process by which they work. Another way we sometimes try to locate people is through surveillance cameras and generally the challenging thing about that is having the man-power to knock on doors asking people if they have cameras and if they will allow us to view them in order to try to trace the missing person’s steps.”

Mark has since gotten remarried. In 2012 he was living in Milford and working as a contractor. He maintains his innocence in the case and believes Doreen may still be alive. Sharon has since passed away.

Donna is still looking for her daughter. She has come to accept that they may never get answers, according to CT Insider.

Doreen is still missing, and her case remains cold. She was described as being white with brown hair and hazel eyes. Doreen was 5 feet, 4 inches tall and weighed 110 pounds. She has a small mole on her abdomen and double pierced ears. Doreen was 12 years old when she vanished and would be 48 if still alive.

“If we look at all of the technology that is available now, cell phones, computers, tablets, availability and popularity of surveillance cameras, it opens up a lot of investigative doors that were not available 20, 30, 40 years ago,” says Marsh. “If we look at that Wallingford case, for instance, cell phone technology could have either implicated or ruled out the father as being involved in the incident. It could have given the investigators more areas to check as well. Then you could compare the cell phone data to areas that have surveillance cameras and attempt to get the missing party and/or the suspect on camera together instead of having to rely on witnesses alone.”

Anybody who has information about the case is asked to call the Wallingford Police Department at 203-294-2800.