A woman has submitted a DNA sample to the FBI to prove claims she is missing Chicago girl Diamond Bradley.
Diamond went missing with her older sister Tionda, 10, when she was only three. The girls had been staying at their mother’s Chicago house when they disappeared in 2001.
The claim first emerged after a video was posted on TikTok showing someone in a dark parking lot in Houston saying “here with Diamond Bradley,” while the unidentified woman holds up a missing persons poster with the picture of the three-year-old.
The video then pans to another woman who is asked to show her scar to compare it to a similar mark Diamond had on the left side of her head when she went missing.
The woman in the video claiming to be Diamond added she did not know what had happened to Tionda, whose whereabouts have been unknown since she disappeared.
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The girls’ aunt, Sheila Bradley-Smith, has continued to look for her nieces and said she is hoping the DNA test will prove to be a breakthrough in their case.
Bradley-Smith admitted other people have contacted the family claiming to be Diamond and Tionda but no one before had agreed to have their DNA tested and fingerprints checked.
She said she was told the results are expected to be expedited but noted it could still be weeks before she finds out whether the mysterious Texas woman is indeed Diamond.
Speaking to NBC 5, Bradley-Smith said the woman claiming to be her niece contacted her earlier this week and she urged her to contact the police to prove her identity.
She said: “She said she has information about Diamond Bradley, and I say what about…? Well, she says, ‘I am Diamond Bradley.’
“I’d never known or experienced somebody so eager to tear down the doors of the FBI to prove who they are. So that gives me a different dynamic of hope. All I can do is hope it is her.”
Bradley-Smith said the woman claiming to be Diamond seemed to remember being in a car with her sister but not much more about her earlier years.
She added: “She said, ‘Well, I kind of remember her, but I remember we were in a car. Then one day I woke up once they got us to the place where we were or wherever we were living. I’ve never seen her again’.”
Diamond and Tionda’s mother Tracy reported the girls missing after she returned home from work on July 6, 2001 to discover they were gone.
Tracy had left her Chicago apartment around 6am the same morning and instructed them not to let anyone inside. She returned home around 11pm, according to Dateline NBC.
An earlier FBI investigation recorded a message Tionda had written was found in the apartment stating the girls had gone to the store and then a nearby playground.
The family however has long maintained the grammar used in the note appeared to be too advanced for someone of the girl’s age.
Bradley-Smith previously told Dateline: “This is not a case of stranger danger. They knew to be suspicious of strangers. It was somebody they knew, somebody they trusted.”
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