50 People listed as missing in Greater Austin area

A lot has changed along Thrasher Lane over the past three decades. In this southeast Austin neighborhood Emilio Torres and his wife raised seven kids. The children are now grown and old friends are now gone.

"There was a good friend right there, was a good friend right there, they're all dead, they all dead,” said Torres.

Torres told me he vaguely remembers a family down the street that went through a heartbreaking situation. In January of 1984, 2-year-old Tanisha Watkins was lured away from her home. She was seen walking down Riverside with a man and never heard from again. Despite the passage of time, Torres believes authorities should not give up.

"I believe, yeah, I believe they should keep looking, the family would like to know what, she might be living or not, might be dead, might be living, you can't ever tell,” said Torres.

Austin has certainly changed in the 30 years since Tanisha Watkins disappeared. Her family no longer lives in that neighborhood but there is a place where you can still see her face.

Watkins is one of 50 people officially listed as missing. Most are from Travis County but there are also missing people from Burnet, Hays and Williamson counties. Details about each individual, like Watkins, is posted on a DPS website. Some of the cases date back to the 1970s

Getting a case posted on the site requires filing a Missing Person’s Report with local law enforcement. And having that information uploaded onto a national database. The disappearance of Angela Morris didn't make it on the DPS website. How that case was handled, from the beginning, prompted APD Chief Brian Manley to announce Monday there would be an internal review.

"We're looking at our policies we're looking at our procedures and we're looking at the steps we took to make sure we're compliant with our policies and our procedures and that we don't need to make any changes to them,” said Chief Manley.

Morris' body was found Sunday in a wooded area near the 360 Pennybacker Bridge, six days after she had been reported missing. Manley said the patrol officer who initially responded searched the area for 15 minutes and stopped after it got dark. An alert was put into the system, but an all-out ground search didn't happen until Sunday.