Nadia Kersh was 23 years old when she left her job in Homewood in November 2008 and was never seen again. Eighteen years later, her mother, Nancy Kersh, is still waiting for police to tell her who was behind the wheel of her daughter’s car in the days after she vanished.
According to WBRC, Nadia was last seen heading to her car in a Homewood parking garage after work before driving away. Nancy says neighbors later told her they saw Nadia’s car parked outside her apartment, and that someone other than Nadia eventually drove it off. For Nancy, that detail remains the heart of an unsolved case nearly two decades old. “It’s just kind of a matter of who was driving her car,” she said, per the station’s report.
A Mother’s Search Continues
Nancy met with Homewood police earlier this year about a lead that came in over the summer, and the department told her it was still searching for answers, the same report states. She described her daughter as a carefree spirit with lots of friends, but said Nadia didn’t have the best judgment — a trait Nancy believes may have factored into whatever happened to her. Nancy continues telling her daughter’s story publicly, hoping it might jog someone’s memory or push someone carrying a secret to finally speak up.
She has said she hopes to gather enough information to find Nadia and bring her home to rest, describing her daughter’s continued absence as a hole no one else in her life can fill. People with information about the case can contact Crime Stoppers and give information anonymously, the outlet notes.
An Arrest, Then a Dismissal
The case briefly appeared headed toward resolution in the years after Nadia disappeared. Police had charged 27-year-old Joacquas Haywood with capital murder, alleging he killed Kersh during the course of a burglary at her home, according to an earlier WBRC report. But in August 2011, a Jefferson County judge granted a prosecution request to dismiss the capital murder charge against Haywood, ordering his release after 15 months in jail awaiting trial, as reported by al.com.
Prosecutors had sought a trial delay after learning that two pieces of evidence had not been tested for DNA at an FBI laboratory, al.com reported at the time. The outlet also noted that prosecutors retained the right to refile the capital charge against Haywood if additional evidence surfaced. Nancy told al.com in 2011 that she supported the dismissal, saying she wanted the truth to come out whether it pointed toward guilt or innocence.
Conflicting Accounts of Where the Car Turned Up
Even the basic facts of where investigators recovered Nadia’s car have varied across years of coverage. A 2015 report from ABC3340 stated that investigators later found her car in the Oxmoor/Valley area, while al.com’s 2011 reporting described her car and purse as having been found in Birmingham’s West End area days after she disappeared. The discrepancy has never been resolved in public reporting.
That same 2015 ABC3340 report described a search-and-rescue team pursuing a lead with a trained dog, with investigators saying they might have vital new evidence within the next month, weather permitting. The outlet also reported that forensic testing on Kersh’s purse and car was underway, with results hoped for by that November or early December. A decade earlier, surveillance footage from the day Kersh disappeared had shown her getting off an elevator, getting into her car, and pulling away, according to a 2016 WBRC anniversary report marking eight years since she went missing. That same report noted that no one had seen or heard from her since.
A Case That Refuses to Close
Nearly two decades on, the throughline across every version of this story is the same: no confirmed resolution, and a mother who hasn’t stopped asking. Nancy’s hope, as she’s expressed in interviews over the years, is that continuing to speak publicly about Nadia will eventually reach the one person who knows what happened to her daughter after she drove out of that Homewood parking garage in 2008.
