24 years ago, Gainesville resident Jacqueline Elaine Nix received a page from her boyfriend. After spending an hour on a payphone with him, Nix went missing. Her body was found nine days later.
Sept. 20, 1999, was the last time Nix was seen alive by friends and family, according to her close friend, Jennifer Boyd. Nix’s home phone was programmed so any messages that came through from her boyfriend would be alerted to her pager.
On that fateful Monday, Nix received what has been described as disrespectful pages from her boyfriend at the time, Billy Millwood.
Following those messages, Nix was seen using a payphone at Zack’s Food Rack on Candler Highway from 11:10 p.m. until 12:10 a.m., according to investigators.
That was the last time Nix was seen alive.
Nix’s car was found at Zack’s with the keys still in the ignition and a pack of cigarettes in the back seat. Both her purse and her address book were missing. Descriptions of the area claim Zack’s Food Rack was poorly lit and the payphone was reportedly not in direct line-of-sight of surveillance cameras.
At approximately 2 a.m. a police officer drove by and noticed Nix’s vehicle parked near the payphone. The hood of her car was still warm at that time, according to the officer.
Nine days later on Sept. 29, Nix was found dead in a wooded area near an industrial park located at 3131 Verona Avenue in Buford, 17 miles away from where she was last seen. That park has since been torn down with new construction going up in its place.
Nix’s body was discovered completely nude with only her jewelry, including rings and a necklace, left on her body. There were no signs of any rape or torture, according to authorities. Her clothes were never found.
Nix’s death has been investigated by the Gwinnett County Police Department as a homicide, but little information has come to light since the incident 24 years ago.
“They have never given us a cause of death,” Boyd said in an interview with Martha Zoller on WDUN’s The Martha Zoller Show. “Her parents have not even been able to get a copy of her autopsy.”
Gwinnett County authorities reportedly ruled the incident as “homicide, undetermined.”
“It's been 24 long years with no answers, no justice for Elaine,” Boyd said. “She is loved and missed by so many people, and we will never give up. And the more people that we have that can reach out — if you know anything, it can be the smallest thing that you think wouldn't even matter. Please reach out to Gwinnett County, reach out to Hall County reach out to someone. You can reach out to me and I will get the information on. The main thing is awareness because I've had people come up to me and tell me that they have thought that this case was solved.”
The last person known to have spoken to Nix was Millwood via the Zack’s Food Rack payphone. To this day, Millwood has not provided any information regarding what he and Nix spoke about on the phone the night of Sept. 20, according to Boyd.
A candlelight vigil in honor of Nix is scheduled for Friday night at 7 p.m. at Memorial Park Funeral Home in Gainesville.
“Elaine was a fireball,” Boyd said. “She was a very caring person. She had a lot of ambition. She wanted to be a nurse and she had dreams and goals of getting married and having a family. She was an absolute great friend to have, very supportive.”
Martha Zoller's interview with Jennifer Boyd can be found at the top of this article.
