ing, he wasn't home. At first, the family wasn't alarmed.

 It wasn't that unlike him to stay with a friend if they were out late and possibly drinking,  Raymond-Reiter said.  We didn't worry right off the bat, but then the more time that went on, we started to get a little bit nervous. 

So, she went through Shawn's old phone bill.

 I just went down the list, and I just started calling people asking if they had seen him,  Raymond-Reiter said.

No one spoke up.

The case drags on

Shawn's mother, Shirley, called police.

But the family said, because of where Shawn had gone missing, they felt the investigation was not taken seriously. They later learned the case was allegedly dubbed  the fairy case  in its early days.

 I feel like back then in 1983 the police kind of turned a blind eye to it,  Raymond-Reiter said.

She said one person told her mother that Shawn had simply gone out to experiment and live his life - and that he would be back. Another officer allegedly told the family that if police had to stop and look for every missing person in the city, they wouldn't have time to do their jobs.

 Panic set in and the nightmare began,  Raymond-Reiter said.

The people who had been out with Shawn that night either said they didn't remember anything - or didn't want to talk. Some retained attorneys.

 Why would you not want to clear your name or help this person out? Or help their family? Why did so many people want to get lawyers?  Raymond-Reiter said.

Days turned into months. Months turned into years.

There was no social media. No cell phones. In 1983, you waited for the phone to ring.

 A death is one thing. When you lose a loved one, it's so hard to deal with, but you can wrap your mind around it, but having someone walk out the door one day and never return, that's something I'll never get over,  Raymond-Reiter said.

A skull in the river

In September 1992, workers dredging the Clinton River in Mount Clemens discovered a human skull. It was turned over to Michigan State Police - and sat unidentified in storage for more than a decade.

In March 2004, Sarah Krebs with Michigan State Police got a call. At the time, she was a newly trained forensic artist fresh out of the FBI's Forensic Facial Imaging course.

 The person said,  Hey, you know, we have this skull here. Do you want to work on it?  she said.

Krebs didn't hesitate.

 Of course, I was really excited to have my first case in the forensic field. I jumped on it,  she said.

It would become her first cold case - and her first identification.

The case presented unique challenges from the start. Only the cranium had been recovered - no mandible, or lower jaw. Drawing on her background in anthropology, Krebs contacted her former professor at Michigan State University and borrowed a mandible from a skeletal remains collection to complete a 3-D facial reconstruction.

 From a skull alone, you can only determine a couple of things-race, ancestry and age,  Krebs said.

The remains were determined to belong to a white male between the ages of 18 and 40. There were only a few teeth remaining in the cranium. Notably, two bicuspids were missing, which appear to be shifted with orthodontics. That detail helped investigators build a more complete profile of who this person might have been.

The tip that changed everything

When the facial reconstruction was released to the media, a Michigan State Police sergeant at the same post where Krebs worked recognized the image. He had grown up in the same area as Shawn. He called Krebs immediately.

Krebs was able to confirm the match using dental records. The skull belonged to Shawn Raymond.

 My first skeletal case. He was my first identification and it was based off the first tip I got,  Krebs said.

The Raymond family would go on to develop a deep bond with Krebs, a friendship that has now spanned more than 20 years. Kit said the family felt they had been blessed with an angel.

The identification set the trajectory of Krebs' entire career, eventually leading to the founding of her nonprofit,  Missing in Michigan. 

 It really became the course of my entire career because of Shawn,  she said.

Before leaving for retirement, Krebs packed the case folder and took it home with her.

 When a cold case detective takes the case home with them, they are never going to give up on it,  she said.  I want to see it through and that's why I'm here today in my retirement. It's my number one case. 

Building a case from scratch

For retired Michigan State Police Detective Lieutenant Patrick Young, Shawn's was also one of his first cold cases. Young graduated high school in 1983 - the same year Shawn disappeared.

After the skull was identified, Young worked backward - gathering records from the previous decades, building a timeline and re-interviewing anyone who may have had information.

Investigators created what they call a  whiteboard,  mapping out potential witnesses, friends, locations, and dates to piece together what happened.

The last confirmed sighting of Shawn Raymond was at Menjo's, where he was observed getting into his car and leaving. From that point forward, no one has come forward to say they saw him alive again.

Shawn's car has never been found. Investigators say they ruled out accidental drowning early on - in part because of the missing vehicle.

 We investigated this not necessarily as a missing person but as a homicide,  Young said.

Young said he believes the car's disappearance alone points to more than one person being involved.

 In order for a car to disappear, I feel that alone would require more than one person,  he said.

Investigators also found that Shawn's license plate had been run through LEIN - the Law Enforcement Information Network - within roughly six months of his disappearance.

Records indicated it was the Detroit Police Department that ran the plate. The officer who ran it was later located, but he couldn't recall why he had done so. Young said the officer was actually placed under hypnosis, and eventually came to believe he had run the plate at the request of Canadian authorities - not an uncommon practice at the time.

Regardless, the plate was never flagged as connected to a missing person.

 It just didn't get entered the right way, so it never raised any alarms,  Young said.

Someone knows something

Over the years, potential witnesses have declined to be interviewed, with some retaining attorneys. Others began cooperating - then pulled back.

 On several occasions folks talked to us. When we would get deeper into the case, they would get uncomfortable and wouldn't want to discuss the case anymore,  Young said.

The case is currently maintained by the MSP Lapeer Post.

 It is the simple question- what happened?  Young said.

 Somebody has answers out there and they have had answers the whole time,  Krebs said.  We need the answers to close this and without somebody coming forward, we are not going to know. 

Still waiting, still hoping

Shawn's mother passed away years ago along with one of his older brothers. Another brother also now has dementia. Kit and her sister reside in Florida.

 Shawn was such a good person, he was a trusting person and I think he probably trusted the wrong people,  Raymond-Reiter said.

But Raymond-Reiter refuses to stop talking. She refuses to let her brother be forgotten.

 Somebody has been living with this for a very, very long time and I think it's time for them to come forward and give what's left of my family some resemblance of peace,  she said.

And whenever  Every Breath You Take  comes on - especially on the hardest days - she knows her brother is right there with her.

 Whenever I hear that song, of course I think of him. Whenever I'm having a bad day or things are not going OK, I'm thinking of him - boom, that song comes on,  Raymond-Reiter said.