By Harriet Ryan
Court TV

Every so often, the phone rings in the detective squad of the Vicksburg, Miss., police department and someone, usually a psychic but sometimes just a person who says they have a gift for these things, tells Lt. Billy Brown about a Jacqueline Levitz vision.

Brown is not a believer, but he's a patient man and he wants to find out what became of Levitz, a striking 62-year-old millionaire who vanished in 1995, so he listens.

"It's always the same thing," said Brown, who estimates he's received 100 such calls in the seven years since the heiress vanished. "They see a large body of water. She's in it or near it. And I say, 'Well, yeah.'"

In Vicksburg, the thundering waters of the mighty Mississippi define the city's geography, economy, culture and history. Saying the vast river, a mile and a half wide below the bluff where Levitz lived, may have played some role in her disappearance is saying exactly nothing.

"It's like if you lived in Arizona and someone says she was in the Grand Canyon," said Brown.

Jacqueline Levitz

On a November weekend almost exactly seven years ago Jacquie Levitz, the glamorous widow of furniture chain founder Ralph Levitz, went missing from her home. She left behind a blood-soaked mattress, a small fortune and a raft of unanswered questions. Despite help from the FBI and a $200,000 reward offered by Levitz's family, police were unable to solve what they classify as a missing persons case, but most people assume was a violent murder.

A Florida court declared Levitz dead two years ago and dispersed her estate, estimated between $5 to $8 million. Detectives in Vicksburg and the Warren County Sheriff's office say they remain confident the mystery can be solved and point to new forensic techniques that may shed light on the perpetrators. For now, however, much of the case remains as murky as the river that Levitz adored.

Just five weeks before she disappeared, the thrice-married Levitz left a high society existence in Palm Beach, Fla. and moved into a 2,900-square-foot red brick ranch-style home with panoramic views of boats working the muddy waters and the vaulting bridge connecting Mississippi with Levitz's native Louisiana.

The farmer's daughter who made good was getting back to her roots and closer to her siblings and their families. When I get done renovating this house, she told people, it's going to be a showplace and the home base for the entire family.

Levitz hoped to double the size of the house to 7,000 square feet and decorate it in high style in time for a huge Christmas celebration with her kin. She didn't even make it to Thanksgiving.

On the morning of Monday Nov. 20, 1995, Levitz's brother-in-law, James Earl Shivers, went to see why Levitz hadn't answered her phone since the day before.

Levitz’s new house in Vicksburg, Miss.

When Shivers approached the house, he immediately noticed that Levitz's car, a cream-colored Jaguar, was parked out front. The door to the house was unlocked and when Shivers ducked inside he saw signs of what police would later call a "violent struggle." The torn tips of fingernails were scattered on the floor and when Shivers summoned police officers, they flipped over Levitz's mattress and found it stained with a large quantity of blood that matched her type.

Nearby, fur coats hung untouched in a closet. A pair of diamond earrings rested undisturbed on a window seat. The only thing missing, her sister Tiki Shivers determined, were two bags — a small purse containing her wallet and a bigger tote filled with make-up, hairspray and other items the sisters jokingly referred to as "first aid."

Aside from her clothes and some valuable jewels that had remained secure in a safe, there was very little in the house to begin with. Levitz was "camping out" — her term for living with only a few amenities — until construction was done. She was making do with a mattress and a refrigerator and a few plastic lawn chairs.

As Shivers looked around the empty house, however, something caught her eye. A glass filled with a small amount of water sat on the window seat near the diamond earrings.

"Believe me, if she had finished that glass, she would have taken it to the kitchen and washed it. She would never have left an empty glass sitting out," Shivers said.