Foul play likely in Allen County disappearance
Published 12:00 am Friday, August 25, 2000
SCOTTSVILLE Allen County Sheriffs Department investigators suspect foul play in the case of a missing Adolphus woman. Peggy Sue Ashley Vinson, 23, a mother of three young children, last was seen alive around 2 a.m. July 29 on a video surveillance camera at the A.O. Smith electrical motor plant in Scottsville, Detective Steve Woods said. Were at a point where were beginning to suspect foul play, Woods said. She hasnt touched her bank account. She hasnt made contact with anyone, relatives or friends. Vinson pulled her car into A.O. Smiths parking lot with another car close behind, and both cars were caught on tape just before she vanished, Woods said. Hours before her disappearance, Vinson finished her shift at Federal Mogul in Scottsville. She then left Federal Mogul and was involved in a dispute with her boyfriend, Woods said, declining to identify the boyfriend but saying he is not a suspect in her disappearance. Vinson drove to the sheriffs department to report the dispute and to obtain a warrant against her boyfriend. She left the department around 1:30 a.m. and drove to A.O. Smith, where she last was seen on the parking lot camera at 2:07 a.m., Woods said. Vinsons babysitter, who was caring for the womans 8-month-old daughter, didnt report her missing until two days after she was to return home. When she did report Vinson missing, she called the Department of Social Services, not local law enforcement. Vinson doesnt have custody of her two oldest children ages 2 and 5 who live with their respective fathers. She has a history of leaving her children with sitters longer than the agreed-upon time, but in the past, she always has made contact with someone, Woods said. One time, when the oldest little girl wasnt quite a year old, she left with a truck driver that she knew, said her mother, Barbara Ashley, who was keeping the child at the time. She was gone about a week, and then she came back. Vinson is 5-foot-7 and weighs 121 pounds. She has a dark tan, blue eyes and blond hair. She has a horses head tattooed on her upper left arm, a barbed wire design tattooed on her upper right arm and two horse heads tattooed on her lower right back.