Middletown woman missing for a decade, leaving family without answers
Nina Coe was in touch with her family members daily. But in July 2015, all communication stopped.
That’s when her siblings contacted police to report her missing.
Coe, 56, had mental health and substance abuse issues and had recently battled cancer. Her family was very worried about her and told police she might need medical care.
With the family’s permission, police searched Coe’s Russell Street apartment in Middletown, where they found blood on a mattress. They also collected a toothbrush.
It’s been almost 10 years since her disappearance, and the family is no closer to learning what happened.
Coe was last seen in the afternoon of July 16, 2015, after returning home from a dentist’s appointment. She was in good spirits, family told police at the time. But then, they were unable to get in touch with her for four days, and they started to suspect something was seriously wrong.
Shortly before her disappearance, Coe had taken out a restraining order against her ex-boyfriend, who had threatened to kill her in her sleep. The ex-boyfriend later admitted to police that he had been in touch with Coe in violation of the restraining order.
When police reviewed Coe’s phone records, they saw that her ex-boyfriend had sent her more than 40 messages, but that her phone had not been in use after 8 p.m. on the day she disappeared.
The ex-boyfriend admitted to police he had met up with Coe in person at a local supermarket in the days leading up to her disappearance. He was convicted in March 2016 for violating the restraining order and sentenced to seven months in jail with two years of probation, but he was never charged in connection with her disappearance.
Middletown police said detectives, search parties of officers, dive teams, K9 teams and helicopters have all been involved in the search for Coe, including in areas near Connecticut Valley Hospital and on Reservoir Road near Middlesex Community College. But they have still found no trace of Coe.
The blood found in Coe’s apartment was later deemed to be from an earlier incident when her ex-boyfriend had attacked her with scissors three or four months before she disappeared. Coe eventually sought help at a walk-in clinic for her stab wounds.
In 2016, the state offered a reward of $20,000 to anyone with information in the case that would lead to an arrest and conviction of the person involved in Coe’s disappearance, and in 2022, she was added to the fifth edition of Connecticut’s Cold Case playing cards deck, which is distributed among the state’s inmates, as the ace of hearts.
Each year prior to COVID, Coe’s family would host a vigil on the South Green in Middletown to honor her memory. On a Facebook post by the Middletown Police Department about the 2020 vigil being canceled, Coe’s daughter, Allison Buikus made a plea to the public: “To the readers, please...any details no matter great or small, can possibly crack the case. I would love to put my mom to rest and see that she gets some peace.”
“If there’s anyone who knows anything, thinks they know something or saw something, they need to come forward, without the public’s help we’re not going to solve it,” Coe’s brother, Michael Plourde, told Fox61 News in 2019.
Nina Coe would be 66 today. At the time she went missing, she was 5-foot-2, weighed about 130 pounds, had brown hair and blue eyes, a scar on the right side of her neck and a tattoo on her leg. She would also wear glasses, her family said. Anyone with information about her whereabouts or what might have happened to her is asked to call Middletown police at 860-638-4000.