From time to time, detectives would receive tips, often someone spotting a body in the river. But the Mississippi is too deep and too wide to drag, and Brown estimates that a corpse dumped in the strong current near Vicksburg has a 50 percent chance of making it clear to the Gulf of Mexico without washing ashore.

Meanwhile, those close to Levitz developed their own theories. Her lawyer, Marschall, thought it might have been "a botched kidnapping that went terribly wrong." Moody, a 32-year resident of Vicksburg, couldn't fathom a local harming Levitz.

"Whatever happened had to be from her past," she said.

Norcross, her psychic, had a vision of two killers. She told the tabloid the National Examiner that the men raped and killed Levitz at the direction of a former business associate and even provided a sketch of one killer. The body, she concluded, was dumped in the river.

Norcross visited her friend's home in Vicksburg after the disappearance.

"I picked up a great deal there. There were cigarette butts outside the window. But they wouldn't let me inside the home. They are very, very, very backwards there."

In a bizarre twist, Norcross filed a federal suit which suggested Levitz's family was involved in her death. She maintains her lawyer concocted the allegations in the suit, which was thrown out as baseless.

And Levitz's sister focused on the glass on the window seat. Levitz made a habit of sitting by that window in the afternoons and staring at the river. The glass, Shivers thinks, indicates she was interrupted during that period of afternoon relaxation.

"I think that someone locally saw her coming from Wal-Mart or saw her in the neighborhood and just followed her home. It would be hard not to notice her. She was very beautiful, very striking. She walked in to a room and people would turn their heads," said Shivers, adding that her sister's romantic view of her new home might have made her an easy target. "She remembered the South as a child when nobody ever locked their doors. People are evil here the way they are the whole world over."

Shivers says the bewilderment and pain has lessened over the years, but she still is desperate for an answer.

Police are too, Brown says. The state crime lab is now processing evidence they collected in Levitz's home using techniques that did not exist when she vanished.

"There are technologies available that were not even thought of in 1995," said Sheriff Martin Pace.

Pace and Brown will not discuss the specific evidence, but about a year ago, their offices along with the FBI began looking at the case anew. They assigned new detectives to the file and began reinterviewing those close to Levitz.

These days when he gets calls on the Levitz case, Brown hopes the caller is a lab tech, not another psychic with a vision involving water.