Shortly before 7 p.m. on a spring evening in 2003, 21-year-old Romona Moore told her mother that she was going to the Burger King down the street in their Canarsie neighborhood and would be right back.

After a few hours passed and Romona still hadn't returned home, her mother, Elle Carmichael, was worried.

Romona, you see, was a nerd. Despite her age, this child of a Guyanese immigrant was still living a sheltered life. A Hunter College student, she worked part-time as a receptionist and otherwise hung out in the local library, dreaming of a career in research. Shy and introverted away from her family, she never partied and, as far as her mother knew, had never had a real boyfriend. She didn't have a cell phone, but she always called her mother to tell her where she was and what she was doing.

—NYPD Inaction Over a Missing Black Woman Found Dead Sparks a Historic Racial-Bias Lawsuit

But she couldn't call and tell her mother that her trip to Burger King had ended, instead, in being abducted by two sick young men who were raping her repeatedly, cutting her, sticking lit cigarettes into her face, and keeping her chained up and lying under a tarp in a basement only blocks from her sleepless mother.

The next morning though, her mother knew something was wrong and called the police.

They didn't want to take the report—"She's over 21"—but she pleaded with them to do so anyway. So they did. And told her to call back once 24 hours had elapsed.

At exactly 7 pm, 24 hours after Romona Moore went missing, her mother Elle called the police again. She was hoping to see, perhaps, something close to the type of search that had been undertaken only two months earlier, when a white woman by the name of Svetlana Aronov had gone missing on the Upper East Side. It wasn't Canarsie, it's true. But maybe Elle thought her daughters life was worth as much.

The day after Aronov vanished, police launched a massive search for her and the cocker spaniel, Bim, she had taken for a walk. The NYPD called a press conference, assigned two dozen detectives to the case full-time, and went door to door, passing out flyers with pictures of Aronov and Bim on them. The cops traced the Aronovs' phone and bank records and analyzed surveillance tape gathered from stores and apartment buildings near her home. A police van emblazoned with the department's 800 tip-line number drove around her neighborhood, blaring details of her disappearance over a loudspeaker. A letter was sent to rare-books dealers, a business the Aronovs dabbled in. Detectives reportedly even consulted a psychic.

—NYPD Inaction Over a Missing Black Woman Found Dead Sparks a Historic Racial-Bias Lawsuit

For the missing white doctor's wife, a bloodhound was even assigned to sniff out the cocker spaniel's tracks.

But the police, even after the same 24 hours had elapsed, weren't as eager to begin searching for Romona as Elle hoped. Instead, they told her "Lady, why are you calling here? Your daughter is 21. These officers should not have taken the report in the first place." And they marked the case as closed.

And so the friends and family of Elle and Romona stepped up.

They called Romona's friends, and made up flyers with her picture and their contact information and then plastered them all over the neighborhood. They discovered that Romona had first gone to a friend's home, where she exchanged CDs, before leaving there around 7:30 p.m., saying she was going to Burger King. They also found out that she never made it to the fast-food joint.

The family called the media, but—for reasons they wouldn't learn until later—no reporter showed interest in the story. In a group, the family went back to the 67th Precinct and pleaded with cops to reopen the case, becoming louder the more they were ignored. "We told them, 'Check her attendance at school, check her grades,' " her uncle Clifford Mann recalls. " 'She never missed a day of school. She got all A's. Her record is impeccable. She's not out running around with some boyfriend. Don't put her in that box!' "

When the police still failed to respond, the family contacted local politicians, who called the precinct demanding action. At 4 p.m. on Monday, April 28, some 93 hours after Romona disappeared, the police finally bowed to political pressure and officially opened an investigation. Detective Wayne Carey caught the case. By then, of course, it was too late.

—NYPD Inaction Over a Missing Black Woman Found Dead Sparks a Historic Racial-Bias Lawsuit

Romona died in that basement, never getting her Burger King, never getting back home, and never getting justice.

'I have done everything you've asked me to do. I've looked everywhere. I've talked to everyone you wanted me to. I can't find her. I can't find your daughter. She doesn't want to be found. I can't find her. I'm not a magician. I cannot pull her out of my hat.'

The story is deep and the media and police inaction and incompetence horrifying. And I suggest you read the entire thing.

sombrero tip to Womanist Musings.