She was supposed to be the flower girl. Instead, her mother walked down the aisle three days later without knowing where her daughter was — and would spend years afterward married to the man she believed had taken her.
A Quiet, Well-Behaved Child
Toya Katrina Hill was born August 24, 1973, and by 1982 was an eight-year-old third grader at City Springs Elementary School in Baltimore, Maryland, living with her mother, Annette, and her siblings at the Lafayette Homes housing project. By every account, Toya was a quiet, well-behaved child — she'd won school trophies for regular attendance and participation, and the day she disappeared was, by her mother's own description, the first time Toya had ever disobeyed her.
A Trip to the Store
On March 24, 1982, Toya came home from school, and Annette gave her permission to play outside before leaving the house around 6:15 p.m. for a wedding dress fitting — she was set to marry a man named John Poindexter just three days later, with Toya serving as flower girl.
While her mother was out, Toya told her sister she planned to walk to a grocery store two blocks away to buy candy. She wasn't allowed to go anywhere alone, and her sister reminded her their mother would be upset. Toya said she didn't care and went anyway.
The Last Confirmed Sighting
Near the store, at the corner of Caroline and Gough Streets, witnesses saw Toya stop to talk with two men — one of them her mother's ex-boyfriend, the other his friend. What happened immediately afterward isn't entirely clear; some accounts describe her appearing to go into the store with the ex-boyfriend's friend before being seen leaving alone. She never returned home.
When Annette got back around 7:30 p.m. and couldn't find Toya, she reported her missing immediately. Nearly 150 neighbors and volunteers joined a search of the surrounding area that night and in the days that followed. Police questioned approximately 150 people in total during the initial investigation. No leads ever materialized.
A Wedding That Went Ahead Anyway
Annette didn't postpone her wedding. She later explained her reasoning plainly: she believed her ex-boyfriend had taken Toya specifically to disrupt the marriage and try to win her back, and she thought going through with the ceremony as planned might convince him to return her daughter. She's said she broke down during the ceremony and refused to open any wedding gifts until Toya came home.
Her ex-boyfriend and his friend were both questioned extensively and consistently denied any involvement, with the ex telling Annette directly, when she called repeatedly afterward, that he didn't have Toya and didn't know what had happened to her. Police ultimately cleared both men as suspects, finding no evidence connecting either of them to her disappearance.
A Marriage Built on Suspicion
Annette's first marriage, to Poindexter, ended within a couple of years. Still convinced her ex-boyfriend knew something about Toya's disappearance, she rekindled a relationship with him and eventually married him — by her own account, specifically in hopes that being close to him again might eventually lead him to reveal what had happened. When months passed with no new information, she left him.
"That was the reason for the marriage," Annette later told The Baltimore Sun. "I thought maybe he would give her back to me. At the time, I would have done anything as a mother to get answers." He has since passed away, having maintained his denial of any involvement until the end.
Years of False Leads
Over the decades, investigators followed up on cases involving unidentified remains that seemed like they might match Toya's description, including remains discovered in the late 2000s and a separate comparison to an unidentified Jane Doe case in St. Louis. None of these matches were confirmed; DNA testing ruled Toya out each time. According to public Maryland court records, Toya was legally declared dead in 1990, a legal step often necessary for families in long-unresolved cases, though it carries no forensic confirmation of what actually happened to her.
A Mother Still Waiting
In a 2011 interview, nearly thirty years after Toya disappeared, Annette told The Baltimore Sun she was, in her words, "still at the same place I was at before" — without any real answers. She described keeping a box of Toya's belongings, including childhood drawings, in her closet ever since.
"I will always believe she is alive," Annette said, "but some part of me says, 'She's that old, how come she hasn't tried to find you?'"
The case remains formally unsolved. If alive today, Toya would be in her early fifties.
If you have any information about the disappearance of Toya Hill, you're encouraged to contact the Baltimore Police Department Missing Persons Unit.
Sources
Toya Katrina Hill — The Charley Project
https://charleyproject.org/case/toya-katrina-hill
Toya Hill, 8: Walked To The Store To Buy Candy in 1982 & Never Came Home — Our Black Girls
https://www.ourblackgirls.com/p/toya-hill-missing-baltimore
Mother Marries Man She Suspects In Her Daughter's Disappearance — NewsBreak / The Vivid Faces of the Vanished
https://original.newsbreak.com/@the-vivid-faces-of-the-vanished-1590506/2708920736310-mother-marries-man-she-suspects-in-her-daughter-s-disappearance