Six years. That's how long the family of Akia Eggleston waited for justice. While the legal battle is over, and the Baltimore man convicted of murdering the young mother and her unborn son will spend the rest of his life in prison, for her loved ones the court victory is bittersweet.

Investigators never found Akia's body, leaving her loved ones in limbo and unable to say goodbye.

​​​I've covered Akia's case since 2017. Sadly, it's one of many stories of young, pregnant women who disappear only to be met with a tragic ending. More often than not, investigators know who's responsible, but it's not what they know. It's what they can prove. Murder cases without a body can be difficult to bring to trial but not impossible. 

In July, a jury convicted Robertson of two counts of first-degree murder for killing the pregnant mom in 2017. On Wednesday, a judge sentenced Robertson to two consecutive life terms with the possibility of parole. The 42-year-old maintains his innocence and refuses to disclose what he did with the remains of his ex-girlfriend and their unborn son. 

Akia's stepfather, Shawn Wilkinson, told me via a text message he's grateful Robertson didn't get away with murder.

"We are thankful that they were able to charge him, try him, and finally convict him!"

​Akia, 22, was eight months pregnant when she disappeared on May 3, 2017, four days before her baby shower. According to prosecutors, Robertson told the young mother he wanted to move in together and convinced Akia to withdraw money from her account for a down payment on a house. But Robertson was already in a relationship with another woman who had just given birth to the couple's second child. According to a statement of probable cause, prosecutors believe Robertson killed Akia and, based on his Google searches, disposed of her body in a landfill. Not long after, Robertson moved to Michigan. 

​Because there was no DNA, prosecutors had to build the case with circumstantial evidence, including phone records, bank statements, telephone records, interviews, and social media messages. U.S. Marshals arrested Robertson in Michigan, in February 2022.

Although the legal case is over, life will never be the same for Akia's family. She left behind a daughter who is now eight years old. She will want to know what happened to her mother and brother. Akia's siblings will never see their eldest sister again, and were robbed of the opportunity to meet their nephew. For the maternal grandparents and aunts, it's another tragic, untimely loss. Akia's mother died of cancer in 2012. Three generations gone.

Robertson had a chance to come clean. He could've said what he did with Akia and her baby's remains. The least Robertson should've done was allow the family to give them a proper goodbye. Instead, Robertson cowardly kept that information to himself. ​Perhaps he was betting on that old phrase, "Nobody, no crime."

Over the last few years, public outcry has drawn national attention to the plight of missing Black people in the U.S. and the lack of media attention to those cases. According to data from the FBI's National Crime Information Center (NCIC), Black people are disproportionately represented among missing persons. The latest Census shows that Blacks make up roughly 13 percent of the U.S. population but represent a staggering 35 percent of the people reported missing in 2022, according to published reports. The numbers are especially concerning when it comes to black women and girls, and some experts fear the same could be true within the Latino community.

Every year, the NCIC tracks the number of people reported missing across the country. 

In 2022, 546,568 people were reported missing in the United States. By the end of 2022, 97,127 of those cases remained active, according to NCIC. How many are Latinos is unknown. According to recent reporting by PBS, local and national law enforcement agencies don't always gather data on missing Latinos the same way they do for Blacks and Whites. That's because the NCIC's numbers combine Latinos and Whites. 

For example, law enforcement agencies enter a missing person's information into the NCIC database by age, gender, and race. The latter includes Black, Asian, Indian, White, and Unknown. There's no specific category for Hispanic because it is only listed as an ethnicity, making it optional for police to include, according to PBS's reporting. 

Why does this matter? Because it ignores an entire demographic and makes it difficult to address the issue of missing persons within the Latino community. Without concrete data, Latinos are more likely to get overlooked when it comes to news coverage. As it is, cases involving black and brown people are less likely to receive media attention. The phenomenon of "White Woman Syndrome," comes to mind. The phrase coined by the late journalist Gwen Ifill refers to the media's obsession with and detailed coverage of missing white women and girls and a lack of interest in covering missing persons of other demographics.

Furthermore, language barriers and immigration status can make it difficult for families to navigate the media and law enforcement agencies. And because people of color are often classified as runaways or because it's not a crime to voluntarily disappear if the person is an adult, law enforcement may delay notifying the public about a missing person.

Such is the case of Reina Carolina Morales Rojas, a Honduran immigrant whose concerned family and landlord reported her missing to the Boston Police Department on Nov. 28, 2022. Even though Boston PD launched an investigation, it took them six weeks to notify the public about her disappearance. Compare that to the disappearance of Ana Walshe, a white mother of three from the nearby wealthy Boston suburb of Cohasset, whose employer reported her missing on Jan. 4, 2023. According to published reports, Cohasset Police went public with Walshe's disappearance the next day, sparking national media coverage. ​

Within days, Welsh's husband was arrested and is accused of killing the 39-year-old mother, even though her body has not been found. Rojas is still missing, and there are no updates on her case. You can learn more about Rojas by visiting our missing persons gallery.

The bottom line is this: Without accurate data, it is challenging to address the issue of missing Latinos in the community. It's imperative that we continue to raise awareness about the disparities in news coverage of people of color and continue to push for better collecting of data on missing Latinos by law enforcement and other criminal justice organizations that track such information. At the very least, we can all make a difference by sharing fliers of missing people in communities of color.