Bradley sisters missing 20 years from Bronzeville as family hopes for new leads, closure

CHICAGO (WLS) -- Tionda and Diamond Bradley vanished two decades ago, but their family continues to cling to the hope that one day they may find out what happened to them.

While 20 years have passed, the family's hearts and emotions remain stuck in 2001. Nothing has changed. The Bradley sisters are still missing.

"I can't imagine two girls disappearing... Somebody knows exactly what happened to them, and somebody knows what they did to them," said their aunt Shelia Bradley-Smith.

Bradley-Smith is convinced the person responsible for the girls' disappearance is someone who knew them well.

"It was somebody personal that knew their mom," she said.

Tionda, 10, and 3-year-old Diamond went missing on July 6, 2001 from the Bronzeville apartment they shared with their mother. In an interview with Tracey Bradley after she reported her daughters missing, she said Tionda left her a note after she came home from work that said the girls went to the school and the store.

But she said it was unlike Tionda to leave a note, and that it was too perfect grammatically for her age. At first the case was treated as a runaway case, which family members fear hurt the case.

"They didn't close off the apartment until maybe seven to 10 days after they were missing," Bradley-Smith said. "Look, how many finger prints and people had been in that apartment?"

When the case was reclassified it became one of the Chicago Police Department's biggest investigations. CPD said the case remains open and investigators follow up any tips they get, but there unfortunately have been no new leads.

The family, however, is not giving up. Cousins Quantese and Shekeane Armstrong are about the same age as Tionda and Diamond, and remember happy days playing together. They also ask that anyone who knows something, anything, about the girls' disappearance will come forward.

The family hopes the 20th anniversary will spark leads and convince someone to finally get a conscience and come forward.