Nancy Eckland News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

What happened to a vivacious young woman and bring answers to the mother who loved her. >> i was always proud of her. she was a real fighter. >> lindsey eckland arrived on july 22nd, 1980. she was the youngest of three. maybe that fighting spirit isn't visible in her photos, but her mother, nancy, says it was always there. lindsey had a passion for animals. she helped out in her spare time at a local shelter. kim davidson, who worked at lindsey's middle school, remembers young lindsey also had a sense of compassion. >> it was freezing cold and i didn't bring a jacket that day and i felt these ...

Suspected me. i didn't know what even a search warrant was. >> the house nancy and lynsie had once shared was torn apart. >> how much of a suspect was nancy? >> i don't know that nancy was on the radar for a long time. she was on the radar long enough to be able to set her aside. >> narrator: after that search they did just that. they believed this anguished mother had nothing to do with the diss appearanappearance of daughter, so they took nancy off the list. they also took off the boyfriend, matthew. he had an alibi that held up, putting him somewhere else at the time that lynsie went missin...

Remained convinced her daughter would one day just come home. >> you thought one day she would walk back through the door? >> yes. >> narrator: she believed it because she wanted to, and because over the years several people had told her they had seen lynsie. >> they never saw the front of her face. they always saw the back of her, and i held on to every word they said. >> narrator: it was torture for nancy, no matter what version of veen version of events you believed and police still weren't telling her anything. >> nancy during all of this time feels like she has been sort of cut out of the...

>> either by accident? accidents happen. >> i never touched her. no, never touched her. >> okay. >> this girl is -- >> have you put her someplace where she's left? >> no, no. >> police searched marty's home and found nothing. no proof that marty had anything to do with lindsay's dis disappearance. so they moved on to a suspect, someone closer to lindsay than anyone else on earth. "dateline" returns after the break. > "dateline" returns aftee break.

♪ >> narrator: her daughter was missing. nancy ekelund began handing out flyers and counting the days without lindsay, ticking them off on little post-it notes. she went to talk with the detective of the plascencia police department. nancy wanted carinne to know about her lindsay, how nancy always knew where she was, how they were best friends. it was a speech she had heard before. >> it is typical with a lot of parents or family members when they report a missing person, sometimes they give you the idea that it is an idyllic family life because i think there's a fear if they don't paint a r...