April 12, 2024, was the last time Charlyn McClain spoke to her daughter, 33-year-old Emily Strite.
“It was in the morning,” Charlyn told Dateline. “And we only talked for about a minute, and she said, ‘I’m going to go see my kids.’” Charlyn says Emily had been staying with a friend in De Soto, Missouri, about a 30-minute drive south of where Charlyn lives. Three of Emily’s four children live with their father, Steve Fults, over the Missouri border in Cahokia, Illinois. According to Charlyn, when Emily went to see the children, Steve would either pick her up himself or send someone to get her. “That was pretty routine,” Charlyn told Dateline. “So my assumption was, ‘Well, she’s at Steve’s now, and she’s staying there.’”
A week later, on the evening of April 19, 2024, Charlyn received an alarming phone call. “Steve called me and said to me, ‘Have you heard from your daughter? It’s been, like, over a week now, and I haven’t seen or heard from your daughter,’” she said. Charlyn immediately grew worried. “He has never called me and questioned anything about Emily or to tell me anything about Emily,” she explained. “That’s why I panicked when he called me because he had never done that before.”
Dateline spoke to Steve Fults via text. He says the last time he saw Emily was “end of March or beginning of april [sic]” and was unaware Emily had plans to visit the kids. “I had no knowledge of emily [sic] wanting to see her kids April 12th because she didn’t call me!” he wrote. He confirmed calling Charlyn when he hadn’t heard from Emily for a while. Steve says his relationship with Emily ended in 2022, “so we had no relationship besides the children we share.” He described Emily as a “strong courageous woman and a great mom.”
On April 20, 2024, the day after Steve’s call, Charlyn filed a missing person’s report with the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office.
On September 20, Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office Public Safety Information Officer Grant Bissell provided a statement to Dateline on Emily Strite’s case. “Emily Strite was reported missing on April 20, 2024, by her mother. Due to Emily’s mother residing within the jurisdiction of the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office, our deputies were dispatched to and completed the missing person’s report.”
During the investigation, it was discovered Emily “was last seen within a municipality of Jefferson County, specifically at a residence in the 900 block of 4th Street” in De Soto, Missouri, the report continued. According to Emily’s mother, that is the same block on which Emily had recently been living. Dateline made several attempts to contact the person Emily was staying with at the time, but was unsuccessful.
According to the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office, while they worked to establish a timeline of Emily’s disappearance, “video evidence was seized from multiple locations.” Bissell told Dateline authorities obtained video from a Waffle House in St. Louis County that “appears to depict Emily,” who did “not appear to be in distress.” The department did not specify the date Emily was seen at the Waffle House but, according to Charlyn, it was around midnight on April 11 — the night before she spoke last spoke with her daughter. Bissell told Dateline “other videos have been seized as well, though the person(s) depicted in the video is more ambiguous and remains a part of the investigation.”
Searches were conducted by law enforcement, as well as Emily’s friends and family. Detectives “conducted area canvasses, seized evidence, conducted interviews, revisited locations, worked with other law enforcement agencies and search parties, and used both traditional and social media to spread awareness,” Bissell wrote.
Bissell told Dateline his department “conducted numerous interviews with Emily’s family, close friends, and associates; in several instances, individuals were interviewed on multiple occasions.” They did not specify who was interviewed.
On October 1, after five months of searching, the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office made an announcement. “On September 28th, Deputies responded to a wooded area near the 4100 block of Frissell Road in De Soto for a report of human skeletal remains found by the property owner,” the statement said. “Through comparison to medical and dental records, investigators with the Regional Medical Examiner’s Office determined that the remains are those of Emily Strite.”
The statement from the sheriff’s office said Emily’s “cause of death is undetermined, and investigators are working to learn how her body ended up where it was found.” In response to Dateline, Officer Bissell stated there are “no suspects or persons of interest in [Emily’s] disappearance because there is nothing at this time to indicate foul play or that a crime was committed.”
Emily’s friends and family remain desperate for answers. And while, originally, they wanted to find her, they now want to find out what happened to her.
Dateline spoke with two of Emily’s close friends, Christi and Amanda Bauman, as well as Emily’s younger sister, Jess Strite, who shed light on the kind of person Emily was.
“She was that person who would give the ones she loved the shirt off her back, down to her last dollar if they needed it,” Christi told Dateline.
“I’ve always loved and cared about Emily. And when she first went missing, it just, you know, it’s sad.
It shouldn’t have happened,” Amanda said. “She never deserved to just disappear in thin air.”
“I think I described her once with, like, a firework,” Jess said. “It’s just, like, absolutely beautiful, shiny, big, vibrant things.”
Charlyn McClain echoed those sentiments about her daughter. “Emily was, like, the most happy person. The most caring person,” she said.
Anyone with information about what happened to Emily Strite is asked to call the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office Detective Bureau at 636-797-5515.
