"We would stand in the living room and make up dance moves, and she would stand in the mirror with her brush and sing," said Sherry Jeffries about the little sister she lost 12 years ago. "I wonder what kind of person she would be like today."
Raven Jeffries was just 7-years-old when she was last seen alive on Aug. 4, 2006. That's when some of Raven's friends saw her getting into a pickup truck outside her home on McDonald Street in southwest Detroit and being driven off.
Three days later, Raven's body was found in a field in Romulus. The little girl had been killed and her body set on fire.
A flammable liquid had been used to set Raven on fire with much of the burns to her pelvic area, according to investigators who tell 7 Action News that may have been to hide potential evidence of a sexual assault.
Renewing hope that Raven's killer will be caught, Romulus Police Captain Derran Shelby is urging any of the children who were outside the day Raven was driven off will remember details that could help the case.
"Something may just pop up in their mind.. that they didn't reveal at the time that they can share with us," said Captain Shelby who pointed to binders full of information in the murder of Raven Jeffries.
"There's nothing this person can do to hurt you anymore," said Ashley Hosler, Raven's sister, about someone who may have been afraid to come forward with information in 2006.
Raven's killer dumped her body in a field near Ecorse Road and Henry Ruff.
"In our opinion, this person is very familiar, intimately familiar, with this location and knew exactly where to go so they wouldn't be seen," said Capt. Shelby who believes the killer would have told someone else about their crime. "These kinds of perpetrators, they can't keep this stuff to themselves."
Romulus Police have recently sent items to a lab to be reanalyzed with newer technology.
And anyone with any information in the case is urged to contact Romulus Police or Crime Stoppers at 1(800)SPEAK-UP.
"I don't want my mom to die and not know what happened to her," said Hosler. "It eats her up every day."
"You don't have to give your name. You don't have to do anything else but give us the information," said Jeffries. "It could save another child's life."
