Cornwell's mother still hopeful one year after disappearance

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By Ty Tagami

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

It has been a year since Kristi Cornwell disappeared, but her mother hasn't given up hope.

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Courtesy of the Cornwell family Kristi Cornwell has been missing for a year.

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Jo Ann Cornwell has lived through the peaks and troughs of an investigation that at times seemed on the edge of success. Yet each new and seemingly important tidbit of information has not brought Kristi home, and her mother has adopted a stoic attitude.

"I don't get my hopes up too high when something comes out," she told WSB Radio News. "That makes it easier."

Kristi Leigh Cornwell disappeared while walking near her Blairsville home on Aug. 11. She left no trace, except her cell phone.

Investigators found it along a state highway a couple miles away. They also found signs of struggle where they think she disappeared.

Her boyfriend, Douglas Davis of Carrollton, told authorities he was talking to her on that cell phone as she walked down the isolated road that night. She told him that a car that had been following her had stopped. Investigators said Davis, who has been ruled out as a suspect, told them that he heard a scuffle and Cornwell shout, “Don’t take me!”

In an interview with Pete Combs of WSB Radio News that marks the anniversary of the incident, the elder Cornwell said she was emotionally numbed by her ordeal yet stubborn in her commitment to find her daughter.

An SUV played a pivotal role in some promising turns of the investigation.

Witnesses reported a white SUV and a gold subcompact car on the road around the time Cornwell went missing.

In September, authorities decided her disappearance might be linked to an attempted kidnapping of a woman 20 miles from Blairsville. The incident occurred in July 2009 in Murphy, N.C., and involved a red Ford Ranger.

In December, police thought there might be ties to another attempted kidnapping of a North Carolina woman about 25 miles from Blairsville. This one was in Ranger, N.C., and happened nine days before Cornwell's disappearance. The Georgia Bureau of Investigation released a sketch of a suspect who they said might be driving a silver Nissan Xterra.

In May, an anonymous person sent a letter to a sheriff in North Carolina claiming that her grandson owned a silver Nissan Xterra and was in the area of the two North Carolina kidnappings when they occurred.

Then, in April, Atlanta police officers came across a man in a black Nissan Xterra parked outside a Buckhead pizzeria. The occupant, James Scott Carringer of Hiawassee, told them he was suicidal. He was wanted for the rape of a 19-year-old relative and for the attempted kidnapping of a 10-year-old girl from a Montgomery, Ala., Easter egg hunt. After a three-hour standoff, he fatally shot himself.

Kristi was 38 when she disappeared. She left behind a teenage son and parents who will not give up on her.

They rented airplanes to scout for her. They sent some 80,000 fliers with information about the case to communities in Georgia, North Carolina and Tennessee. They auctioned off their lake house to pay for their search. They are in frequent contact with the media to publicize the case. And they have their own website dedicated to their missing daughter, kristicornwell.com.

The site contains details about Cornwell and her disappearance and offers a $50,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of her abductor.

In addition to that money, Jo Ann Cornwell estimates that the family has spent as much as $50,000 trying to find her daughter.

She said she doesn't have enough information to know whether Carringer abducted her and she doesn't want to point fingers at the dead man and hurt his family.

She also believes her daughter is still alive. "I'm not going to give up that hope," she said. She hopes that her family's efforts will pay off, that someone, somewhere will report a detail that will help solve the case. And she hopes that will happen soon.

"I can't believe it's gone on this long," Jo Ann Cornwell said. "I am desperate to find Kristi and bring her home."