BAYTOWN, Texas — Saturday marks five months since a Baytown woman went missing. Family and friends gathered to pray that 29-year-old Kalie Goodwin is found. There is a person of interest in the case who is already in jail on a murder charge.
Several people gathered at Jenkins Park where Kalie’s mom, Kaci Richardson, said she wants to continue spreading awareness about her daughter’s disappearance.
In teal shirts with Goodwin’s photo is a message of hope: they’ll never stop searching for her.
“Thank you so much for loving Kalie, and her being such a lovely soul,” Richardson told the crowd.
Standing next to Kalie’s mom during the vigil is Donna Shaw, who said the two were brought together for the wrong reasons.
Shaw said her daughter, 24-year-old Megan Rouse, was murdered 12 days after Kalie Goodwin went missing.
“My daughter was the same way as Kalie, and they’re beautiful children, beautiful children, never should’ve been treated the way they were,” Shaw said.
The man charged with Rouse’s murder is 39-year-old Quan ‘Country’ Flowers. He’s currently in the Harris County Jail.
Although Baytown police have previously said Flowers was charged with aggravated kidnapping in Goodwin’s disappearance, no such charge is listed in Harris County court records.
Goodwin’s family said on April 22 they received a call from a man demanding $600 via CashApp, in which Kalie can be heard in the background.
“Her last words from her daughter were ‘Mom, help me. They’re beating me, my face is deformed,’ if I had heard them words, I don’t know what I’d done,” Shaw said.
Baytown Police previously said a friend last saw Goodwin the night before at her apartment complex on Decker Drive near San Jacinto Avenue.
Police believe Kalie got into a vehicle with an unknown male and left the complex. Flowers was later pulled over during a traffic stop in that same vehicle and arrested on an unrelated charge.
A digital forensics team used cellphone data to track both Goodwin’s phone and the phone linked to the CashApp to a home in Houston, where evidence was found that Goodwin was assaulted. That homeowner was arrested on unrelated charges.
Flowers is scheduled to appear in court for Rouse’s murder charge on Oct. 10. Police still don’t know where Goodwin is.