By BOB HIGH

“Prissy” Batten Dowless’ family hasn’t seen their daughter, wife, sister and mother for a year today, Sept. 4. They’re at a loss as to what happened to her.

The 26-year-old woman, married and the mother of four children – including a daughter who was less than three months old – hasn’t been seen by any of her family since early in the morning one year ago.

Until someone comes forward with more information, Sheriff’s Detective Trina Godwin said her investigation has hit a brick wall.

“We don’t know anything about her being seen that’s been confirmed. We’ve got different statements from adults and children, and it’s impossible with what we know to go any further,” Godwin said.

“I don’t want to think she’s dead. I just want to know she’s alright,” Prissy’s father Sherland Roderick “Roger” Batten said last week.

Conflicting stories

Batten admitted there had been some problems caused by different family members providing conflicting information. “There’s been too much second-hand information.”

Batten said he was in California, delivering chickens with an 18-wheeler, when he last talked with his daughter. “I talked with her at 1 a.m. (Columbus County time) on Sept. 4. She was on a cell phone, the same one found broken in pieces in my house where she was staying,” Batten pointed out.

Prissy’s father said the last time she was seen at his home was shortly after 1 a.m. by a family member. “One of the children got up and saw her on the computer, and she sent the child back to bed.”

The woman’s husband, Jamie Dowless, told investigators he heard a vehicle leave the home location sometime between 5 a.m. and 5:30 a.m. the same morning. “He said he went from the Pine Log Road house to a nearby horse barn and found a burgundy Mitsubishi Elantra she apparently drove from the house,” Detective Godwin noted.

An example of conflicting information is the report by another Batten family member that Prissy visited a home along Joshua Drive, a street in a mobile home park off Page Mill Pond Road south of Cerro Gordo that same Sunday a year ago. The time was between 5 a.m. and 5:30 p.m. – the same time her husband found the car at the stables.

Prissy was reported to have been driving the Elantra at the Joshua Drive home, and had her 4-year-old daughter Celena with her. However, there’s no report that the daughter was with her that Sunday afternoon, nor is there information on how the daughter was returned to her home.

Other disappearances

Godwin said there is not a history of domestic violence between Prissy and her husband, although Jamie Dowless told the detective there were many arguments and “she would attack him.”

Godwin also pointed out this is not the first time Prissy had disappeared. “There were at least two other times in a four-year period we know of, but none of them were reported. We’ve had some reports of people seeing her, but every time we check we find the woman is not Prissy, and the lead goes to a dead end.”

Dowless moved to his parents’ home near White Lake about a month after his wife disappeared, and took his three children, plus Prissy’s oldest daughter, with him.

Roger Batten said when he returns from his trucking trips to the West Coast – hauling produce coming back – he usually gets his four grandchildren.

Batten had granddaughter Celena with him last week during his interview. “She’s one of the reasons I stay so upset,” Batten said with teary eyes.

“She’ll just up and ask, ‘Pa, have you heard anything about my mama?’ It’s tough to tell her no, because we don’t know anything else,” the father concluded.

Godwin asks that anyone who has any information about Carol Marie Batten Dowless, now 27 if she’s alive, to call the Sheriff’s Office at 642-6551, or 9-1-1.