Jana Morton:Still Missing After One Year

Jana Morton left her ex-husband's home to visit her mother in Caswell County, NC.   Although her ex-husband, Charles Morton, wasn't too concerned when she didn't return the next day, he knew that when she hadn't been heard from in a week that something was wrong.  Her daughter reported that she was missing and her car was found weeks later in the parking lot of a grocery store.

According to reports it would be unusual for her to abandon her car, it was the only thing she owned and it was unlikely that she would give it up willingly.  Charles Morton admits that Jana "fell apart" when he got sick and had to have a leg amputated, she got into the wrong crowd and started using drugs.   She had been arrested and had just finished serving a short jail sentence, but was in need of help.

It's reported there is a person of interest in the investigation, Robert Mitchell Foust, who has a long criminal record including drugs and violence related crimes.  He admitted to authorities that he had possession and use of Jana Morton's car.

There is a family who waits for any bit of information on what happened to Jana, living with the fact that she is most likely deceased, except for her 17 year old daughter who holds out hope that her mother has just lost her memory and will come home safe.  Jana Morton's mother, Sherry Cloninger, hopes her granddaughter is right, but accepts that it's unlikely.

The teen has created missing person posters. The latest one announces that the family and sheriff’s department are offering a $6,000 reward for information about her disappearance. The poster says that “Michelle is a mother of a 17-year-old girl and 7-year-old boy who miss her.”

Jana Morton is part of Project Jason's Angels Awareness Program and you can go to their site and download a missing persons's poster to have copies made and distribute in the area of Alamance and Caswell Counties in North Carolina.  If you live near the area from which Jana vanished, please consider helping this family bring their loved one home.

The investigation into the disappearance is open and ongoing.  If you have any information you can add to help this family find their loved one, please call authorities.

“I drive to Burlington or Graham and I think and wonder if she is there,” Cloninger said. “I see a stretch of woods or a pond and wonder could she be there. It’s constant. It’s not just trying to accept the fact that she is gone. You just want to know where she is at. You just want to bring her home. I don’t want my kids to have to continue to live with it.”

When Morton’s white 1997 Dodge Intrepid was found, it had some damage to the hubcaps and steering. Cloninger wonders if anyone saw the car stuck somewhere before it was found on Feb. 27. She doesn’t know if anyone saw anything that could help the case. But if someone did, she hopes that person will come forward and give that information to the sheriff’s department.

Morton is white. She is 5 feet 2 inches tall and weighs about 115 pounds. Her hair is brown. Her eyes are hazel. She was last seen wearing a tie-dyed short sleeve shirt, blue jeans and white tennis shoes. She has a tattoo of a rose on her left upper chest.

Anyone with information can contact the sheriff’s department at 570-6313 or can give information anonymously through Crime Stoppers at 229-7100.