Twenty-three-year-old Andy Sigmon was last seen on April 5, 2016, and while his family knows he is probably not still alive, they remain determined to bring their son home. Here is what we know about the circumstances surrounding Andy’s disappearance.
He left his place of work at Renwood Mills in Newton, North Carolina on April 4, 2016 on or around 11 p.m., when his shift was supposed to end. Between 5 to 5:30 a.m., an officer with the Davie County Sheriff’s Office noticed his Jeep Cherokee sitting on the side of Highway 64 East north of Peter Hairston Road in Advance. This location is more than an hour away from where Andy lived.
A Man in Distress
Andy was coming out of the woods by the side of the road and spoke with the officer, who didn’t believe Andy was in any distress. He told the young man to move on and the officer left the scene. Andy’s vehicle was found near Colleemee, a historic plantation listed as a National Historic Landmark near Mocksville. The property consists of more than 2,000 acres, and later on April 5, caretakers at Colleemee called law enforcement around 2:30 p.m. to report a man on the property who seemed to be acting strangely. This man, who is now believed to have been Andy, was saying out loud that people were trying to hurt him. The caretaker told the man he would get him some water and went inside to call the police. When he came back out, the man who wasn’t wearing shoes or a shirt, was walking back into the woods.
A couple named Adrienne Carpenter and Timothy Keck lived near Colleemee when Andy went missing. They said they were having lunch in their home when they heard their dogs barking and noticed a shirtless man outside their house. He seemed disoriented and they called the police to see if they could get him some help. Andy went back into the woods and although they tried to follow him, they lost sight of him in a thick area of brush. They were concerned because that night, temperatures dropped to around 25 degrees.
When the police came back out to the area that afternoon, they looked at Andy’s Jeep and saw that it was out of gas, missing the car battery, and catalytic converter. After an extensive search along the nearby Yadkin River that included the police, Andy’s family, and search dogs, they found Andy’s shirt and boots he had worn to work the previous day.
The search for Andy included police dogs and a helicopter from the North Carolina Highway Patrol, but they couldn’t locate him. The Hickory Daily Record noted that the area surrounding Colleemee includes a dirt path leading to a cornfield about a quarter mile from the main house. It is bookended by two creeks around 2,000 feet apart.
The Help of a Search Dog
Five days after he disappeared, a retired police officer named Corporal Kim Williams went to the property with her trained search dog along. They were joined by a tracker with the Central Piedmont Search Team named John Kelly. Kelly noticed there was a steep ravine drained by a winding creek. He spotted some marks in the dirt that made him believe someone had tried to claw his or her way back up the embankment. This is when his shirt, shoes, and a lighter that belonged to Andy were initially found. They alerted the Davie County Sheriff, and they sent a boat out to the area. Casey the search dog got on board, and eventually began indicating on the odor of a cadaver. They still didn’t find the sign of a body.
A year after he went missing, Andy’s family held a vigil for their son, where friends and family spoke about the young man, a friend played one of his favorite songs, and they released yellow balloons. His sister Paige remembered her brother as shy, but friendly once you got to know him.
Andy’s father, Jody, told the Hickory Daily Record that he felt like his son got involved with the wrong group of people and that led to his disappearance. His parents said as a young man, he loved racing dirt bikes and being around other people. But when he got to high school in Catawba County, he began experimenting with drugs. Eventually, he became addicted to opiates. He tried to get help and went into a rehabilitation center. He got out about a month before he went missing.
In March 2019, in a renewed effort to get some answers for Andy’s family, local volunteers organized another search in the area of the Yadkin River. His mother had been living with terminal cancer and hoped to get some answers about her son. Unfortunately, the search of the property surrounding the river didn’t turn up any new leads.
Anyone with information on Andy Sigmon’s whereabouts is asked to contact the Davie County Sheriff’s Office at 336-751-5547 or the Center for Missing Persons at 910-232-1687.
Where are Blake and London Deven?
Next, I’ve been following an intriguing story out of the Fayetteville, North Carolina area and wanted to share some details here in case anyone knows any information that could help. It involves two children, Blake and London Deven, who were both adopted by a woman named Avantae Deven. Both Blake and London, who are now both a young adult and an adult, have been missing for years. This is one of those stories that will leave you with more questions than answers, and news station WRAL has been doing their best to unravel the details. The majority of what I’m sharing about this case has come from their reporting. The Fayetteville Police Department recently held a press conference sharing some details of the investigation but also requesting help from the public on putting together a timeline of the whereabouts of Blake and London Deven in the past several years.
Here is what we know so far.
An infant boy named Trenton Dewayne Shuler was born in 2006 and placed into a foster home in Buncombe County, near the Asheville area, in May 2011. His named was changed to Blake Deven at some point. His birth mother recently told the media that he went into foster care because of abuse allegations, which she denies. She did not know he was missing until the Fayetteville Police notified her in February of this year.
That same year, in January, Avantae Deven filed a petition in a Madison County court to adopt a 7-year-old girl named Moriah Elizabeth Foster, who now goes by London. Her birth mother had not seen or heard from her biological daughter since 2001. The adoption was approved in March 2011. In April 2013, Avantae filed a petition to adopt Blake, who would have been around 6 years old at the time. That adoption was approved just a few months later. In 2015, Avantae and the two children moved across the state to Cumberland County. In 2016, they moved into a home on Eichelberger Drive near Devlin Drive. Then, in June 2019, they moved to a house on Berriedale Drive, where the family still lives.
A Homeschool Connection Deepens the Mystery
One of the reasons police are having trouble finding people who have seen Blake or London Deven is because they were apparently homeschooled. WRAL found record of a Deven Academy, that lists the address for the home school as the same address where the family lived until June 2019. The documents showed the school opened in 2007 and in 2013, reported that two students were enrolled.
2019 marks the last time London Deven was seen in Fayetteville. Blake Deven has been missing since 2022, but was only recently reported missing in January of this year. He was last seen at a Wal-Mart when he would have been between 14 and 15 years old. On April 4, police then announced they were also looking for London Deven, who would now be 27 years old. They released a photo of her that they had, but the young woman was only around 12 in the picture. The police announced the FBI has joined the search for Blake and London Deven, but did not say whether Cumberland County Social Services was involved. They did say this investigation did not start with a 911 call, and that it’s a complex investigation that will take time.
A reporter had asked if the investigation started with a 911 call, and I believe that’s because Avantae Deven called 911 on January 19, 2024, to report Blake missing. She said the young man had told her he was going to a Buddhist retreat, but then she never heard from him again. She said she saw him between Thanksgiving and Christmas in 2022.
On March 28, 2024 the Fayetteville Police announced they were asking for the public’s help in finding Blake Deven, who would now be 17 years old. The day before that, they, along with the FBI, searched three different locations in Fayetteville in the search for Blake Deven. One of those homes was on Berriedale Drive, where Blake and London lived when they were children. The investigation focused on the garage and interior of the home, and some investigators were seen wearing Hazmat suits. The family living at that home now has no connection to the investigation and were cooperating with the search.
WRAL found a neighbor on Berriedale Drive who said he had not seen the children since around 2018, and he could not say for sure whether the teen girl that used to live there was the same as the one in London’s photograph, because she was so young in that. He said he knew the woman that lived in the house as Ava Maxwell, but police said it was Avantae Deven. Why she was using a different name is a mystery.
Human Remains Found
On April 12, police announced they had found partial skeletal remains during the search for Blake and London Deven. They would not say specifically where the remains were found, or if they were connected to the missing Devens. The remains will have to undergo extensive testing, which could take weeks or months.
As I was reading the details of these disappearances, I kept circling back to the Deven family, specifically Avantae Deven. I have not been able to figure out if anyone else is currently living in her home with her, such as a spouse or significant other. But on April 24, The Fayetteville Observer reported that the Cumberland County Department of Social Services requested an emergency order of protection on behalf of 95-year-old Leonie Maxwell, the mother of Avantae Deven.
Family Neglect Accusations
Leonie Maxwell is currently in a Cardiac Intensive Care Unit at Cape Fear Valley Medical Center after sustaining an anoxic brain injury, which is an injury caused by a complete lack of oxygen in the brain, in November. This court filing claims that Avantae Deven is Leonie’s caretaker, and that she has not responded to calls from the hospital staff regarding necessary medical decisions that need to be made for her mother. These calls from the hospital appear to have been happening around the time that police served search warrants at Avantae’s current home and previous home as part of the search for Blake and London Deven. The Department of Social Services says that because of her condition, Leonie Maxwell is unable to communicate, cannot consent to protective services, and no other person is able or willing to arrange for protective services.
A district court judge ordered that Avantae could still visit her mother in the hospital but is not allowed to give any directives or instructions to medical personnel treating the respondent. He also added that Leonie Maxwell’s assets be frozen, and said the Department of Social Services believed she her finances totaling more than $15,000 were being exploited by her daughter. The judge also asked that Wells Fargo Bank turn over financial records for Leonie Maxwell for the months of February through April.
This same news article further highlighted that Avantae Deven is 61 years of age, and was granted a divorce in 2006 after living separately from her husband for five years. They do not appear to have adopted any children together. Police say they are in regular contact with the members of the Deven family. Members of the news media have not been able to make contact with Avantae Deven.
Investigators are asking anyone who visited the Deven family at their homes on Eichelberger Drive or Berriedale Drive, whether it was to deliver something, buy something, sell something, or repair something, to contact them at 910-578-2697 or the FBI at 1-800-225-5324. I will share photos of Blake and London Deven on the Missing in the Carolinas social media pages.
Show Sources:
Andy Sigmon
https://www.wsoctv.com/news/local/man-last-seen-by-friends-at-work-in-newton/212744025
Blake and London Deven
https://www.wral.com/story/fayetteville-missing-the-search-for-blake-deven-and-london-deven/21389533
https://www.fbi.gov/wanted/kidnap/blake-deven
https://www.fbi.gov/wanted/kidnap/london-deven
https://www.wral.com/story/fayetteville-missing-woman-skeletal-remains/21379962
