A Barry County mother is desperately searching for her 16-year-old daughter.
Mercadeys Overbeek was last seen about a week ago, in the company of a friend who is also unreachable.
“I don’t know where my daughter is, I don’t know if she’s safe,” said Crystal Gillon.
She gave her daughter a hug goodnight last Tuesday and went to bed.
Gillon said that her daughter asked if a friend from Kalamazoo could sleepover that night and she agreed. Gillon said she didn’t recognize the girl who arrived at her home in rural Delton by Uber.
When Gillon woke up the next morning, both girls were nowhere to be found.
Gillon’s younger daughter had told her Overbeek and her friend left the house around midnight to go for a walk.
“Then later on I found out that this friend is not a friend from Kalamazoo, she actually met her online and the girl was from Florida,” Gillon said.
She searched her daughter’s computer and found the 2 girls connected in a group chat on the Kik app, which allows users to send messages anonymously, with usernames that are not linked to a phone number.
“In my heart I feel that there is something wrong,” Gillon said.
Described as a “social media fanatic,” Overbeek hasn’t posted anything online since last week, hours after she was last seen leaving home.
Gillon wasn’t been able to find her daughter’s friend online either.
“Since then the girl has deleted her Facebook page. She’s deleted all pictures she took with my daughter,” Gillon said.
The Mother did find a note on her daughter’s desk, it read, “Sorry for bothering you guys. I still love you be happy without me. I’ll be back though (jus [sic] kidding) Love Cadeys.”
More letters were also found in Overbeek’s younger sisters’ room, which Gillon described as “suicide notes.”
Also written in Overbeek’s handwriting, Gillon summarized the notes, “Stating basically that by the time we try to find her she will no longer be alive.”
Investigators with the Barry County Sheriff’s Office say the evidence does not meet the threshold to put out an Amber Alert for the teen.
Gillon says that she doesn’t know if her daughter was manipulated or left willing, but after a week with no contact with family or friends, she knows her daughter is in trouble.
“I don’t know if she got herself into a situation she can’t get out of but I do know that my daughter would have called home by now,” Gillon said.
Calls to her daughter’s cell phone no longer ring.
Desperate for answers, the only thing that this Mother knows for sure is that her daughter needs help.
“I just want to know she’s safe I just want to know that my baby is alive and okay,” Gillon said. “I’m willing to do anything I just want her to come home.”
