17 Years Before a Tennessee Mom Disappeared, Her Daughter Went Missing

Police detectives almost always retire with a few unresolved cases, and these very often end up sticking with them well after they’ve turned over their badges. For Matt Filter, he wished he could have solved the nefarious disappearance of Tennessean grandmother Wanda Faye Walker.

Wanda was 60-year-old when she vanished back on October 4, 2016—17 years after her adult daughter, Laresha Walker, also went missing without a trace.

Before Filter recently retired from the Nashville Police force after nearly 30 years on the job, he served as the former lead investigator on Wanda’s case, which meant he was also looking into the circumstances surrounding Laresha’s disappearance on November 19, 1999—even though police officials have said the two cases appear to be unrelated.

“I worked Wanda’s case from the very beginning, and because I was already dealing with the family, I was also assigned Laresha’s case,” Filter tells A&E Crime + Investigation, adding that, to the best of his knowledge, both disappearances remain under investigation.

Filter acknowledges that “Wanda’s case basically went cold,” and he “didn’t have many viable leads to follow up on.”

“And with Laresha’s case, there are probably a few things that could still be looked into,” he continues. “This is what the cold case unit does: It dedicates its time to figuring out what happened to these 50 or 60 missing people, and unfortunately, there are always new ones coming in.”

Wanda was reported by her family missing after failing to show up for her shift at the Dollar Tree store on Frankline Pike. She was last seen near the home she shared with a cousin, not even two miles from the store. Nine days after she vanished, police recovered Wanda’s abandoned Nissan Maxima along Wade Avenue, between her home and her workplace.

Neighbors told police the car had been parked there for about a week. Inside the locked vehicle, police found Wanda’s purse along with a blood-stained backseat. Police determined the blood came from Wanda, and that there was too much of it for her to have survived.

“We don’t have all the answers that we need, or that we want,” explained Quontesa Chambers, Wanda’s granddaughter explained to Nashville’s News Channel 5 in 2023. “We’re not giving up, and we are not losing hope.”

Quontesa declined an interview request from A&E Crime + Investigation because the case is too painful. Quontesa noted that her family remains committed to learning the truth about Wanda and Laresha's disappearances.

“It's one thing to bury someone and know they are deceased,” she shared with News Channel 5. “It is another to know something happened, but you don’t have any answers connecting to what happened.”

Wanda vanished after living for years with the torment wrought by Laresha’s 1999 disappearance. Family members had reported that Wanda’s boyfriend, Harold Henderson, was the last person to see her alive after helping her earlier that day when her car overheated. He was seen adding oil to the engine before they are said to have gone their separate ways.

Laresha, who was better known by her middle name, Deana, has not been seen or heard from since dropping off her 2-year-old son, Rayvon, at her sister’s house.

The 23-year-old mother told relatives she had plans to drive approximately 40 miles away to Murfreesboro to have her car appraised for a repair. But later that evening, neighbors told police they heard Laresha outside her home, arguing with an unknown male on the evening of Friday, November 19, 1999, according to Filter. Little did her family know, that would be the last time any of them saw her.

On Saturday, November 20, 1999, her sister, Lakesha Chambers, went to Laresha’s home, looking for her. Instead, Lakesha found the outfit she’d seen Laresha wearing the previous evening, suggesting the missing woman changed clothes before vanishing.

She was reported missing by Wanda on November 21, 1991, and her maroon 1995 Oldsmobile Achieva has never been found.

Police suspect Laresha was abducted, and her family believes she might have been taken by someone she knew.

Filter said he would have liked to have secured some measure of justice for Wanda’s loved ones prior to his retirement, which is why the case still weighs on his mind.

“I did develop a good suspect in Wanda’s case,” Filter explains, adding he believes the case is solvable. “There is a good suspect in her case, but the district attorney’s office would not prosecute, citing a lack of sufficient evidence to get a conviction.”

The Davidson County District Attorney’s Office did not return A&E Crime + Investigation’s request for comment.

Filter describes the case as “very frustrating.”

“There’s a lot of evidence that points to a particular individual as being responsible for her disappearance,” he continues, declining to identify that suspect. “I believe she was murdered by someone she knew, and I tried to present this case to the DA as a no-body homicide case, but they just weren’t willing to move forward with it.”

Filter says the fact that Wanda was the second person from the family to vanish gave him extra incentive to learn the truth.

“I hate it for the family, especially since Wanda was the second person who disappeared,” Filter says. “I at least wanted to get Wanda’s case resolved or find her remains or something—close one case out for this family who’ve been through so much. I feel confident that there are people out there who know a little more than what they are willing to come forward and say. If you have any kind of information about these cases, you need to call the cold case unit.”