Woman hopes to find closure about mother missing for decades

McKENZIE, Tenn. —  It’s the time of year where Mother’s Day gifts and cards line store aisles.

But while most people are preparing to celebrate their moms, one woman is just hoping hers will come home.

“Twenty-eight years is a long time, and we don’t have any closure,” Cindy Pruitt said. “I want to know what happened to her before I die.”

Her mother, Brenda Wyatt, has been missing for 28 years, but she still remembers her smile like it was yesterday.

“Infectious, that’s what it was,” she said. “She could make anyone laugh.”

Wyatt went missing from her home in Henry County. Since then, her daughter has moved to McKenzie.

Just a day after the anniversary of the disappearance and two days before Mother’s Day, she hopes to find some answers.

“This time of the year is hard for me,” she said. “Her birthday is next month. She will be 69 years old, and I’ve missed all those years.”

Pruitt says she was working the day of the disappearance and even talked to her mom on the phone while she was on a lunch break.

“I told her I loved her, and I pulled up in my driveway and there are all these police cars, and I’m looking around and I’m already thinking, where is my mom?” she said.

But after many years of dead-end investigations, she was left with no answers as to what happened.

She said she won’t give up hope until her family finds closure, and asks anyone who might know something to come forward.

“I miss her being around,” she said. “You don’t have that one person to run to when you have that problem.”

We reached out to the McKenzie Police Department and the Henry County Sheriff’s Department about the case. They said the case is still open but is not active at this time.