Transcription
On this episode of Black Girl Gone, I bring you the stories of two missing women: Calandra Stalworth and Ebony Giddens.
Calandra Stalworth was 28 years old when she disappeared on March 27, 2017, in Crestview, Florida. The day she disappeared, Calandra dropped off her daughters at her grandmother's house and then went to work. Afterwards, she called and told her grandmother she was on her way, but Calandra never showed up. A week later, her car was seen, and her boyfriend and another woman were found driving it, but there was no sign of Calandra. Six years later, she is still missing.
Ebony Giddens was 27 when she disappeared from Columbus, Georgia, on March 11, 2018. The day after she was last heard from, her brother came to her home to pick up her sons for school, but when he got there, he discovered Ebony was gone. After her disappearance, her boyfriend was arrested, but five years after she was last seen, Ebony is also still missing. What happened to Calandra and Ebony? This is Calandra and Ebony's story.
The women from this week's episode are both mothers whose disappearances have devastated their families. Calandra Stalworth grew up in Crestview, Florida, and had spent most of her life there. She was a graduate of Crestview High School. After she graduated from high school, Calandra gave birth to her first daughter in 2007, and then in 2008, she had another little girl. In 2013, Calandra began dating a man named Antoine Smith. Her family told NBC that Calandra was an outgoing person and a caring mother, but she didn't always have the best taste in men. According to reports, Antoine had a lengthy record and history of selling drugs, but after she met Antoine, Calandra was head over heels for him. She even got his name tattooed on her chest. Her family, however, seemed leery of Antoine and at some point even suspected him of being abusive. Her grandmother, Joan, told NBC, "I told him, if you ever put your hands on her in front of me, me and you are going to go head to head." Despite the alleged abuse that was happening in their relationship and her family's reservations, Calandra continued to date Antoine.
By 2017, Calandra was living in Crestview with her two children and working as a housekeeper at a Hilton in Sandestin, Florida. By all accounts, Calandra was living a normal life, raising her two children and working, but in March of that year, everything changed, and the mystery of where Calandra is has baffled her family and investigators working the case.
On March 27, 2017, Calandra left her home and dropped her daughters off at her grandmother's house. Her grandmother, who was living next door, said that she and her granddaughter were very close. They would talk on the phone while she was on the way to work and then sit and talk when she got home. When she got to her grandmother's house that day, nothing seemed out of the ordinary. This was a typical part of her routine. After dropping her kids off, Calandra drove the 30 minutes to her job. She worked her shift that day and then clocked out. According to her grandmother, Calandra called her when she got off and told her that she was on her way to pick up her girls, but Calandra never showed up at her grandmother's house.
As the evening came and went, and she still had not come back or called, her family started to worry. The next day, Calandra still had not shown up or contacted any of her family members, and when her parents found out that she had not shown up for her shift at the hotel, they knew that something was wrong. It was not like Calandra to not contact her family and tell them where she was. Her grandmother said that they spoke on the phone every day, and so for an entire day to go by with no word from Calandra, it's a bad sign.
Immediately, her family turned to social media for help. They began sharing Calandra's picture and description of her car all over in hopes that someone knew something. Now, some of the reporting said Calandra's parents contacted the police to report her missing, but back in 2017, an officer who spoke to ABC3 said that she had never actually been reported missing and they had not received an actual missing persons report. But because of the social media activity, they had placed a "be on the lookout" for Calandra. He said that they knew her family was looking for her, but since no one had contacted them directly, there was no official report made.
But two days after Calandra was last seen, her family got disturbing information from police. On March 29, 2017, the Crestview Police contacted Calandra's family and said that they were canceling the "be on the lookout." The reason? Well, according to them, Calandra came into the police station and asked them to cancel the report. They said that she told them that she had gone to Alabama with her boyfriend and that she didn't call her family because she did not have a cell phone signal. Respecting her wishes, the police canceled the report. It seemed like good news. Calandra was found, and she was safe, and it seemed like this missing person case had come to a happy end, but it was only the beginning.
No one knows why Calandra went to the police before contacting her family or going home, but when she left the station that day, it was the last time that anyone ever saw her. Despite her claims that she did not have a signal on her phone, it was strange that she made no attempt to contact her parents, her grandmother, or her children, and then she left the station that day. She still never called her family. Her family said that she would never leave her children; that she would never leave her family without contacting them. There were so many questions, like if she was planning to go somewhere with Antoine, then why didn't she just tell her grandmother? Why did she call her grandmother and say that she was coming if she had planned to go to Alabama? Calandra was also a diabetic and without her medication, which also made no sense for someone who was planning to be away.
After Calandra canceled the report, her family waited four long days for her to come back, but she never did. They called her phone, but there was no answer. And so, on April 2, 2017, her family once again contacted the Crestview Police Department to report Calandra missing again, and the police officially took the missing persons report. Later that same day, police in the neighboring town of Destin, Florida, spotted Calandra's car leaving the parking lot of a Motel 6. And so, they pulled the car over, and they found two people in the car: Antoine, who was driving, and a young woman, but the woman wasn't Calandra. Her name was Talia Drum, and she was 18 years old at the time and had also been reported missing on the 29th. Police searched the car, and inside, they found drugs, but they also found Calandra's phone and her purse. Antoine was arrested that day and charged with several crimes unrelated to Calandra's disappearance.
After his arrest, police questioned Antoine about Calandra, and according to reports, he told them that he had dropped her off at a man's house, but he wouldn't give police any other information about who this man was or why he would allegedly drop his girlfriend off there. He also didn't seem to have an explanation about why he was in possession of her phone and her purse if he had dropped her off. After her family found out that Calandra's car was being driven by Antoine with another woman, they were convinced that he had done something to her. Like I said before, they had their apprehensions about Antoine and believed that he was abusive towards Calandra. Now she is missing, he has her stuff, and he's refusing to talk. They know that he knows what happened to her, but police said that he was not cooperative. With his extensive criminal history and the fact that he was the last person known to have seen Calandra, he was a suspect, but police had no evidence to charge him in her disappearance.
After his arrest, Antoine was convicted on multiple charges and was sentenced to two years in prison, but even after his conviction and his time to think, he still refused to cooperate in the police's investigation into Calandra's disappearance. He and Calandra had dated for over three years, and when she vanished, he never once tried to contact her family. "Pot isn't going to let us visit because he knows what he did. I don't even want to see his face. It makes me so angry," her grandmother Joan told NBC. Her cousin said, "I think that her disappearance is definitely connected to Antoine. He was controlling. You can tell that he was an abusive type person."
In the months that followed Calandra's disappearance, police received very little information. They exhausted all the leads that they did have, but with the last person with Calandra refusing to tell them more, it didn't take long for this case to go cold. For Calandra's family, they did all they could to search for her. They were never able to find anything that would lead them to her. However, a few months after the disappearance, police said that they were very concerned about this case, but that they had no evidence that there had been foul play and were continuing to treat this case as a missing person. "We have no information that she has been killed or that a homicide has occurred. We have a missing person case right now," the chief of police told a local news station. The operations support commander for the police department said that, "We don't have any information to indicate the lady is dead. It's not that unusual for people to pick up and decide to leave without a word."
Calandra's family had hoped and prayed that she was alive. The last thing that they wanted was to find her dead, but it also did not make sense that she would have just left her children and family behind. The only reasonable explanation was that Calandra could not come back home. There were so many things that didn't sit right with her family about the way things were handled, and one of those things was Calandra coming into the police station on March 29th. Maybe it wasn't her after all, but the only way to prove it was through surveillance footage. Unfortunately, the footage from inside the station that day was deleted. The police said that there was no need to keep it at the time because the person missing had been found.
In the years that followed Calandra's disappearance, her family has tried to keep her story in the public eye. They have searched for her themselves and tried to put the pieces of this mystery together, but sadly, they have not been able to find anything new. In October 2020, after being released from prison, Antoine was arrested again, this time for the murder of two men during what police said was a drug deal gone wrong. When he was caught by police, he was driving one of the victims' cars. Antoine was charged with capital murder and is currently still awaiting trial on those charges. As of today, he still has not cooperated with the police or spoken to Calandra's family. Calandra has now been missing for six years, and her family wants to find her and bring some kind of closure to the situation. Calandra was a mother to two young girls, and they, more than anyone, deserve to know what happened to their mother. Her family is convinced that the one person who does know is behind bars, but until he tells them more, the search for what happened continues. This is a cold case, but investigators need your help. Someone may have seen something or been told something that might help in this case.
Calandra Stalworth was last seen by her family on March 27, 2017, in Crestview, Florida. She was last known to be with her boyfriend, Antoine Smith. Calandra is five foot six and at the time of her disappearance weighed 220 pounds. If you have any information about her disappearance, please contact the Crestview Police Department.
On March 11, 2018, when 27-year-old Ebony Giddens' brother went to her house to pick up his nephews for school, he discovered that his sister was missing. Five years later, Ebony is still gone.
In March 2018, Ebony Giddens was living in Columbus, Georgia, with her three sons, who were nine, five, and two at the time. On March 10, 2018, Ebony and her children spent the day at a family cookout. Her family said that Ebony loved when her family would all get together. They spent the day eating and playing Spades, just having a good time. When Ebony left that evening with her sons, her family had no idea that it would be the last time that anyone ever saw her again.
On Sunday, March 11, 2018, at around 11 p.m., while at home, Ebony spoke to a family member of hers on the phone. Her relative said that everything seemed normal during that conversation, and Ebony didn't say anything that would cause alarm, but what happened to Ebony next remains a mystery.
On Monday, March 12, 2018, Ebony's brother, Alvin, came over to her house to pick up his nephews and take them to school. It was a normal part of their routine. Alvin picked up the kids every morning at around 7:30 a.m. Alvin arrived at his sister's house and knocked on the door, but no one answered. Now, this was of course unusual because it was Monday morning, and Ebony knew that he would be there to pick up the kids. Alvin knocked again, rang the doorbell, and knocked again. Still no answer. He then tried to call Ebony, but his calls were going straight to voicemail, and she wasn't responding to any of his texts either.
After several attempts to reach Ebony, Alvin decided to call his nephew's father, Roderick. Roderick is the father of Ebony's youngest children. When Alvin gets a hold of him, he asks Roderick if he had spoken to his sister, but he told him that the last time he spoke to her was earlier in the day on the 11th but hadn't talked to her since. Alvin also called their mom, Lisa, to ask her if she had spoken to Ebony, but she hadn't either. And so, she decided to call Ebony's boyfriend to ask him if he had heard from her. At the time, Ebony was dating a man named Malcolm Jackson, but Lisa said that when she called his job, the secretary where he worked said that he was unable to come to the phone. Everyone who knew Ebony was becoming increasingly more concerned. Their gut was telling them that something was wrong.
After finding out from her brother that nobody could find Ebony and she wasn't answering the phone or the door, Roderick decided to join Alvin over at Ebony's house to see if he could help find out where she was. Once he was there, both men knocked and rang the bell again. They both tried to call Ebony's phone, but they were still getting no response. But then, all of a sudden, the door opened. It was Ebony and Roderick's five-year-old son. "Finally, my own son came to the door. He just said that Mom was gone," Roderick told Dateline. When the men went inside, they went from room to room looking for Ebony, but she was nowhere in the apartment. They noticed that her keys and wallet were still there, but her phone was missing.
One thing everyone knew for sure was that Ebony would have never left her children alone. She was a devoted mother whose whole world surrounded her kids. She would have never simply just left a nine, five, and two-year-old in the house alone for any reason. And so, once they realized that Ebony was gone, they called the Columbus PD to report her missing.
As the investigation into her disappearance began, her family and investigators began to learn more about Ebony and her relationship with Malcolm. According to reports, Malcolm had been abusive towards Ebony, something her family didn't know fully until after she disappeared. "Most things she would keep to herself because she knew how my family would react to them," her cousin Ashley told News Nation. Victims of domestic violence not telling family about the abuse is a very common occurrence. Whether fear or embarrassment or both, victims often stay silent about their abuse, and so there were things even those close to Ebony did not know about her relationship.
On March 9, 2018, the Friday before Ebony disappeared, she called the police on Malcolm after a fight between them turned violent, and he assaulted her and held a gun to her head. Malcolm was arrested that night, and Ebony filed a restraining order against him. He was released the next day and ordered to have no contact with Ebony at all, but the same day he was released, he began calling Ebony repeatedly, leaving threatening messages. She told him it was over; she was afraid of him, and she didn't want to be with him anymore, but Malcolm continued to call. A neighbor later told Roderick that they had seen Malcolm on Sunday outside of Ebony's house working on her car.
The day after Ebony was reported missing, Malcolm was arrested again and charged with aggravated stalking, possession of a firearm, and felony probation violation. When he was first arrested, police would not say if the charges were connected to Ebony, but eventually, they did reveal that those charges were related to Ebony and the events that took place in the days before she went missing. While Malcolm was in jail awaiting trial, Ebony's family did all they could to search for her, but there was no trace of Ebony anywhere. Sadly, while they were searching, people attempted to extort money from them. One of the people was a man named Travis Gardner, who had attended the same high school as Ebony. He contacted her family on Facebook, telling them that he knew where she was, but it would cost them a fee. He told them that if they didn't give him one million dollars, that they would never see her again. Travis was arrested and charged with criminal attempted theft by extortion and terroristic threats and intimidation.
But despite the charges against Malcolm, police could not find enough evidence against him to charge him with Ebony's disappearance. He, of course, denied any involvement in her disappearance, but in October 2019, over a year after Ebony was last seen, Malcolm went on trial for assaulting and stalking her. He decided that he would act as his own attorney. After a week-long trial, Malcolm Jackson was found guilty. During his sentencing in November 2019, Malcolm said, "Just because I was found guilty does not mean that I am guilty of any of these charges. Not once have I ever abused one woman physically or verbally in my life." He continued, "I'm not sure exactly how to speak on the disappearance of Miss Ebony Giddens, your honor, because like I stated before, I am innocent, and I can prove it, and I will prove it."
During Victim Impact Statements, a cousin of Ebony's revealed that right before she disappeared, Ebony confided in her that she was pregnant. "Ebony told me she was pregnant, and the child was Mr. Jackson's child. If she's out there right now, she has a child." Roderick also gave a statement detailing the trauma that their then seven-year-old son had experienced. Roderick told the court that his son had witnessed Malcolm grab Ebony by the neck and push her against the wall. He said that on the night that she was last seen, March 11th, their son heard loud noises before he fell asleep that night, and when he woke up the next morning, his mom was gone.
After his conviction, Malcolm Jackson was sentenced to 35 years in prison. The judge gave him the max on each count: 20 years for aggravated assault, 10 years for aggravated stalking, and five years for using a gun during the commission of a felony. He must serve the full sentence. He began serving that sentence in November 2022 after he completed his sentence for violating his probation on a prior burglary charge. For Ebony's family, Malcolm being in jail is a good thing, but not knowing what happened to her still haunts them, and as of today, Malcolm still has not been charged in connection with Ebony's disappearance. Her family, however, does believe that Malcolm is involved in whatever happened to Ebony.
It's now been five years since Ebony Giddens vanished from her home while her children slept, and after all this time, all her family wants is closure. They have tried to keep their hopes up that one day Ebony will be found alive, but even if she is no longer alive, they still want to find her and bring her home. They still want to know what happened to her. Sons went to bed with their mom alive and well and woke up to their entire world being turned upside down. Just like Calandra's daughters, Ebony's sons deserve to know what happened to their mom.
The women from this week's story, aside from being missing, had one other thing in common: they were young mothers. They had children that they loved, and that loved them, and they too are victims of these disappearances. Both of these cases continue to need the public's attention, no matter how much time has gone by. We know that answers can be found. Sometimes, all it takes is for the right person with the right information, no matter how big or how small, to speak up. Please, let's continue to share these women's stories until their families get the answers that they deserve.
Ebony Giddens was last seen in her apartment on March 11, 2018, in Columbus, Georgia. Ebony is four foot nine and at the time of her disappearance weighed 110 pounds. If you have any information about Ebony's disappearance, contact the Columbus, Georgia Police Department.
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