Friends and family of Akia Eggleston gathered on May 7, 2017 to celebrate the final month of her pregnancy at a Baltimore, Maryland, baby shower planned in her honor — but she never arrived.

Her absence triggered a frantic search and years-long investigation into the 22-year-old’s disappearance as her desperate family struggled to get — and then keep — the case in the spotlight, according to ’s Dateline: Unforgettable. 

Although Eggleston was never found, six years after she vanished, the man police believe was responsible for her disappearance and death was finally brought to justice, ending the family’s relentless quest.

“The family at the center of this story is one of the most determined and committed families I’ve ever met,” Dateline correspondent Josh Mankiewicz said in the episode, titled “The Day Akia Disappeared.”

Akia Eggleston misses her own baby shower

Eggleston — who was already the mom of a two-year-old daughter — was eight months pregnant with her second child in May of 2017 and was eager to celebrate her son’s coming arrival with those closest to her.

“She was ready for it,” her stepfather Shawn Wilkinson recalled. “It was a day to celebrate.” 

Eggleston had meticulously planned the baby shower herself, which made it all the more troubling when she didn’t show up. 

One of her family members called 911 to report her missing, while others headed directly to the local police station to report the disappearance.

A search of Eggleston’s apartment produced some troubling clues. 

“As we walk through her house, I get his eerie feeling like something’s not right,” Eggleston’s aunt Sanobia Wilson remembered. 

Eggleston’s furniture and clothes were gone and there was a hole in the wall of the Baltimore apartment.

Her family spread out and searched a nearby park, but found no sign of the expectant mom. They knew that Eggleston would never have abandoned her young daughter, especially after losing her own mom at the age of 17.

Akia Eggleston vanished after bank visit

Baltimore detectives learned that the last sighting of Eggleston happened four days before her baby shower, when she was seen on surveillance footage at a local bank on May 3, 2017.

That was the same day that her social media activity abruptly stopped at 5:22 p.m. as she was mid-conversation with someone online. 

According to Baltimore Police Department Detective Jill Beauregard, it was “highly unlikely” that Eggleston would have simply disappeared on her own, leading authorities to take a deep look into the men in her life.

They learned the suspected father of her unborn baby was Eggleston’s boyfriend, Michael Robertson.

Robertson told police that Eggleston took him and his children into her home when he was down on his luck.

“She didn’t want nothing from me. She just really wanted to help me out because she cared,” he said in a police interview, describing her as a “gorgeous” person.

But he also said that the couple hadn’t been exclusive, adding that he questioned whether he was really the coming baby’s father. According to his account, Eggleston had wanted him to play a greater role in the pregnancy and when he refused, she broke up with him, six days before the scheduled baby shower.

A devoted best friend

Robertson pointed police to Eggleston’s best friend, Stephen Foster, a man that Robertson claimed was obsessed with Eggleston.

“He was trying to be with her,” Robertson told police. “So any time she called and said jump, he’d ask how high.”

Foster was expected to drive Eggleston to her baby shower and was known to lend his friend money for rent. Eggleston trusted Foster so much that she gave him the password to her email and social media accounts and a key to her apartment. 

Foster told police that when he couldn’t get in touch with her, he let himself into the apartment days before the shower and discovered her clothes were missing and that hole in the wall, but said he initially wasn’t overly concerned. It wasn’t until she missed the baby shower that he knew something was wrong.

Police learned through a review of Eggleston and Foster’s social media messages that the pair was sexually active at times and had a friends-with-benefits scenario.

“Stephen Foster was in love with Akia, um, but Akia did not reciprocate the same feelings,” Beauregard explained.

Foster denied harming Eggleston and police ultimately learned that he’d been at his job as a security guard on the night she disappeared.

A jilted lover emerges

While taking a deeper look into Eggleston’s relationship with Robertson, they learned that it had initially began as an affair. At the time, he had been dating another woman, Hali Pomeroy, who he had one child with and was expecting a second with.

“She finds out about Akia and she loses it and Hali has a temper,” Beauregard said. 

Pomeroy took her anger out on Eggleston on social media, calling her names and warning that she’d “reap what you sow ten-fold.”

But Pomeroy insisted in a police interview that she’d never hurt Eggleston. On the night that Eggleston disappeared, Pomeroy was with her mother taking care of her newborn child.

Akia Eggleston’s family pushes for attention to case 

As the months passed without any answers in the case, Eggleston’s family worked to get her name in the press, but was met with resistance from local news stations.

For help, they turned to the Black & Missing Foundation, a nonprofit aimed at bringing awareness to missing people of color. The organization helped get the case coverage on a local and national scale.

“In hearing Akia’s story, we wanted to give the family hope,” Black and Missing Foundation co-founder Derrica Wilson explained.

Meanwhile, Eggleston’s aunt Sanobia Wilson helped convince the FBI to work on her niece’s case.

Investigators finally got the break they needed after getting access to cell phone records from the night that Eggleston disappeared.