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Oxygen's Dateline's latest episode will uncover the truth about a 21-year-old pregnant student, Kelsie Schelling, and how her killer was found three years after her disappearance.
As the Dateline investigation suggests, Laura Saxton was Kelsie's mother, who fought endlessly to find out what happened to her teen daughter after she vanished on February 3, 2013.
While the police arrested Donthe Lucas, Kelsie's boyfriend and the father of her unborn child, Kelsie's body has not been found to date, and her mother is still dissatisfied for not being able to put their daughter to rest.
Dateline: Secrets Uncovered episode on January 22, 2025, at 8 pm EST will investigate this tragic incident and how Laura continued her search for her daughter:
"Kelsie Schelling disappears one night after leaving work, leading family and investigators on a four-year hunt to find the pregnant 21-year-old; cell phone records reveal what happened to Kelsie."
More on Laura Saxton's efforts to find the truth about her daughter's disappearance in Dateline's latest episode in our story.
Dateline: Laura Saxton was supportive of her daughter's pregnancy, Exploring her efforts after Kelsie's disappearance
As noted by Kelsie's friends and family on Dateline, she met her boyfriend, Donthe Lucas in 2010 in college, but Kelsie often discussed with her friends that Lucas was physically abusive towards her, and they were often in an on-off relationship.
They left college in 2012, and one day, Kelsie announced her pregnancy to her mother, Laura. While she was very young to have a child, her mother was supportive of her and promised to be by her side always per ABCNews:
“I will support you whether Donthe is in the picture or not in the picture. It’s going to be OK,” ...She was happy. She wanted that baby. She wanted to be a mom.”
On February 3, 2013, Kelsie disappeared from her work, and her friends could not find her. While her phone was going straight to voicemail, Laura and her family were getting regular text messages, which was weird, and they didn't feel like it was Kelsie sending them. Thus, Laura was sure that something bad had happened to her daughter.
Laura believed her daughter was alive and even set up a Facebook page, “Help Find Kelsie.” and claimed to offer $50,000 to anyone who would find her. Her desperation even landed her in an online scam, but she was yet to discover what had happened to Kelsie.
Dateline: Police arrested Lucas for murder and Laura testified against him
The police found Kelsie's abandoned car in Pueblo, and Lucas was the primary suspect because he had last seen her alive. The footage from a Walmart near Pueblo showed an unidentified man driving her car. However, since the police did not have enough evidence, the case was closed.
Three years later, a woman named Lauren Suhr pretended to form a relationship with Lucas because she was deeply moved by Kelsie's case. She reported that Lucas had admitted that he was the man who was driving Kelsie's car near the Walmart.
This re-opened her case, and the police investigated Lucas's old phone, which suggested that he had called her girlfriend to Pueblo in his grandmother's house and killed her because he did not want her to have his baby.
Laura testified against Lucas in court with a long and emotional speech, which furthered Kelsie's case, and he was sentenced to life imprisonment without parole.
It was reported that Lucas never admitted where is Kelsie's body. Laura shared on ABC's 20/20 how she will have to live her whole life without putting her daughter's body to rest:
“I'm never going to recover without getting her back...I still have nowhere to go to take her flowers, to go sit and talk with her, take her balloons on her birthday, go to her on the holidays. I have nothing. Donthe took that away from me.”
Catch the full episode on Dateline: Secrets Uncovered on January 22, 2025.
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