Disappearance of Bianca Piper


Bianca Noel Piper is an American missing person who disappeared at the age of 13 in Foley, Missouri, on March 10, 2005. She is believed to have been abducted, though her fate and whereabouts remain unknown.

Background

Bianca Noel Piper was born in Foley, Missouri, on December 26, 1991. During her early childhood, she was hospitalized due to her ADHD and severe bipolar disorder. Piper required daily medications to prevent disorientation and hallucinations.
At the time of her disappearance, Piper was an eighth-grader at Winfield Middle School. She was in special education classes due to her short attention span and repeated absences.
Prior to her disappearance, Piper's therapist had recommended that her mother drive her a certain distance from home and have her walk back on her own, giving Piper time to deal with her own aggression.

Disappearance

On the evening of March 10, 2005, Piper and her mother had a dispute over doing the dishes. Although it was snowing that night, Piper, having found the activity her therapist recommended helpful, requested that it be done again, wanting her mother to drop her off at a further distance from home than ever before. Piper was last seen around 6:15 p.m. that evening, when her mother dropped her off at McIntosh Hill Road about a mile from their home.
At the time of her disappearance, Piper was wearing a lime-green blouse, a gray Adidas hooded sweatshirt, blue jeans, and white tennis sneakers. She also had a flashlight in her possession.
Hours later, when Piper still had not returned home, her mother reported her missing at 8:20 p.m.

Investigation and developments

Although investigators initially believed that Piper had simply gotten lost on her way back home, following an extensive search, authorities came to believe that she had been abducted. Piper had no prior history of running away from home.
Piper's mother passed a polygraph test, as did her mother's live-in boyfriend. Her biological father was also extensively interviewed. No one in Piper's family is considered a suspect in her disappearance.
In 2007, a multi-jurisdictional task force was created to investigate Michael J. Devlin for a possible connection to Piper's disappearance, as well as those of other children between 1988 and 1991, after two missing teenagers—Shawn Hornbeck and Ben Ownby—were discovered in Devlin's residence. Hornbeck had been abducted in Richwoods in 2002, while Ownby was abducted in Beaufort in 2007. A Lincoln County detective believed that Devlin was at least aware of the search for Piper, stating: "Whether he was a part of it, in it, or in the middle, or just watching from afar, he absolutely knew what was going on. I certainly believe Michael Devlin was monitoring our search and the disappearance of Bianca Piper." The task force was dissolved in October 2007; no evidence of Devlin's involvement in Piper's disappearance was discovered.
On February 3, 2023, a septic tank near where Piper was last seen was drained. The sheriff's department of Lincoln County is working with Othram Labs, a forensic genealogy company, in an effort to solve Piper's case.

Aftermath

Piper's father died in 2009. Her mother now lives in St. Charles, Missouri. The investigation into Piper's disappearance remains open, though it is now considered a cold case. Piper's case is one of two active missing person cases in Lincoln County, alongside that of Charles Arlin Henderson, who disappeared in Moscow Mills, Missouri, on July 25, 1991, at the age of 11.
In September 2014, Piper's sister, 24-year-old Tiffany Piper, was sentenced to eight years in prison for trafficking two suburban high school girls in June 2012. According to a St. Charles County prosecutor, Tiffany Piper was initially herself a victim of human trafficking.
As of June 2024, the Amber alert for Piper remained active.