EERIE similarities in the disappearances of Lauren Spierer and Dulce Alavez may hold critical clues to the missing girls’ fate, a private investigator has revealed.

On September 16, 2019, Dulce disappeared from Bridgeton City Park in Cumberland County, New Jersey, about an hour south of Philadelphia.

The child, who was 5 years old at the time, was playing on the swings with her brother when she vanished.

Mom Noema Alavez Perez, who was sitting in a car near the park’s entrance, desperately combed the area for her daughter, calling police to report her child missing.

Over the years, Bridgeton Police have followed dozens of tips, interviewed several people, and traveled to 11 states, including Mexico, searching for Dulce.

However, four years have passed without any leads.

Trent Steele – the co-founder of the Florida-based nonprofit Anti-Predator Project working with Dulce’s family to help locate her – underlined eerie similarities between the child’s case and that of 20-year-old Lauren Spierer.

Spierer, a sophomore at Indiana University at the time, went missing on June 3, 2011, following a night out with friends at a sports bar in Bloomington, Indiana, about an hour south of Indianapolis.

Spierer was last seen walking home at around 4:30 am, traveling south on College Avenue, about two-and-a-half blocks from her apartment.

Surveillance footage captured her walking barefoot, wearing a white T-shirt and black leggings.

Spierer has never been found.

EERIE CONNECTION

Steele exclusively told The U.S. Sun that the two cases share a chilling resemblance: “I think the obvious similarities between the two is that they’ve both been gone for an extended amount of time, and there’s never been nothing, absolutely nothing recovered – not a body, not a shoelace, an artifact of clothing, nothing.

“It’s not uncommon for people to go missing; it happens every day across this country, but usually if they’re not found alive within a fairly short amount of time, then usually a body turns up, or something turns up.

“But the fact that both Lauren and Dulce have been missing for years with absolutely no trace of anything. It puts them in a very small percentage of cases where that happens.”

Steele called Dulce’s case an old-school disappearance due to the lack of video evidence.

“It’s unique in the fact that we’ve not seen a disappearance like this in quite a while,” Steele told The U.S. Sun.

“A lot of disappearances these days that we’ve been involved with involve kids meeting with somebody online, getting involved with someone online.

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“This case, I guess you can call an old-school disappearance – kid goes to the park and disappears.

“We have not seen a lot of these in recent years that don’t have any attachment to it in terms of technology,” he added.

REBUILD THE INVESTIGATION

Steele, who got involved in Dulce’s case after being contacted by the family early this year, said he and his team are looking to revamp the investigation from the bottom up completely.

“Everybody here works the first 48 hours all the time,” he told The U.S. Sun.

“The first 48 hours of anything like that are the most critical. We’re at a point now where I think it’s most important to go back and rebuild this thing the right way with fresh eyes.

“Maybe bring some new technology into play, and redo this investigation from the bottom up, and look at it with some fresh eyes, some fresh opinions, and see where that takes us.

“I think the most important thing here is to make sure things are done thoroughly, make sure things are done right, and to make sure that we incorporate fresh eyes and opinions on the case.”

Meanwhile, Spierer’s family continues to hold onto hope to uncover what may have happened to her.

Parents Robert and Charlene Spierer continue to pay tribute to their missing daughter on a Facebook page dedicated to Lauren.

The Spierer family declined to comment when approached by The U.S. Sun.

‘HER EYES REMAIN THE SAME’

The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children released a new age-progression photo of Dulce on September 16, marking the fourth anniversary of her disappearance.

Investigators are hoping the photo helps bring Dulce, who would be 9 years old now, home.

“We ask people to keep in mind that this may not be exactly what Dulce looks like now,” the center’s director of communications, Angeline Hartmann, said in a statement to CNN.

“This is an approximation meant to spark recognition.”

Dulce’s mom was stunned when she saw the new image rendering of her daughter.

“Has she grown that much already?” she told Atlanta-based Univision affiliate WUVG.

“I remember when she was little, and I said, ‘Oh my God, four years have already passed, and I don’t recognize her face (in the image), but I do recognize her eyes.’

“Her eyes remain the same.”