A missing car, an empty bed and a timeline isn’t quite adding up to self-proclaimed detectives on social media. When Linda Brown, a white special education teacher in Chicago, vanished on her way to a standing acupuncture appointment over the weekend, her family and husband, Antwon Brown, made public pleas for her safe return and any information leading to her whereabouts. After a new development was made in her missing persons’ case, the Black internet already picked out their own suspect.
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Brown, a teacher at Robert Healy Elementary School, was reported missing on Saturday. She was last seen near the 4500 block of South Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Drive in the city’s Bronzeville neighborhood, where she lives, CBS News reported.
“She was in the bed when I went upstairs, everything was fine, don’t know when she got up,” her husband Antwon said, per the outlet. But when we woke up the next morning around 8:30 a.m., he says there was, “No sign of her. I thought she went to acupuncture because she goes to acupuncture on Saturdays.”
“We don’t know where she is,” Antwon continued, according to local news channel ABC 7. “We need to find her because I’m breaking down and I don’t know what to do.” He recalled how his wife recently took a leave of absence from work for mental health treatment, although she planned on returning to her job when school resumed. However, he claimed as that day approached, Brown’s struggles with anxiety and panic attacks worsened.
A break in the case occurred on Wednesday when a family member announced Brown’s car, a 2021 blue Honda Civic, had been found, WGN 9 reported. The vehicle, according to her family, was found near South Lake Park Avenue and East 35th Street. But, Brown remains missing.
There is video footage of her walking alone over a pedestrian bridge that leads to the lakefront at 3:00 a.m. on Saturday, her family said. “This is so out of her character to be missing,” Lisa Quintana, Brown’s sister, told the station.
But while police are actively investigating Brown’s disappearance, social media detectives and true crime lovers have come up with conclusions of their own. Many are skeptical of her Black husband, who some say was on television “doing his best impersonation of Chris Watts.” Watts murdered his pregnant wife Shanann and their two young daughters in 2018, then falsely portrayed their disappearance as a mystery before confessing to the crimes.
After Antwon told reporters how he’s “shaking” because he “just needs his wife home,” one X user asked, “Is the shaking in the room with us? Did y’all see this shaking?”
“That husband might’ve did it. Why I watched the interview and he was referring to her in past tense? Hmmmm,” a third X user questioned.
But not everyone agreed with the online speculation. “People process trauma very differently, especially on camera under pressure,” one X user commented.
“The missing Chicago woman Linda Brown was reportedly seen on video walking alone at 3 AM after parking her car,” another X user wrote, in part. “However, the internet bullied her husband & accused him of murder, but there’s now a high chance he’s completely innocent.”
“It’s going to be wild if Linda Brown committed suicide while everyone was making think pieces about her husband!,” someone else said online.
Despite online speculation, authorities has not listed Antwon as a suspect.
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