Kayla Hatley couldn't sleep Sunday night.
She watched the evening news about human remains found in Decatur County early Sunday. She heard the speculation about whether the remains were those of Holly Bobo.
But Hatley stayed awake wondering something else: Maybe someone had found the remains of her mother.
"It made my gut clench," she said before the remains were identified as Bobo's. "I started thinking maybe it could be my mom. I hope it could be Holly, but I also hope it could be my mom."
Hatley, now 23, was 8 years old when her mother Kristie Baugus disappeared on Oct. 27, 1999. Baugus, 27, was said to have been last seen with by her boyfriend, who told police he dropped her off at her mother's home. Baugus' boyfriend was later killed in an exchange of gunfire with police.
Hatley was raised by her grandmother. Now, almost 15 years after her mother disappeared, Hatley is the mother of two children herself. She said she wants people to remember her mother and for her mother to have a final resting place.
"Any time they ever find anything, even if it's not around here, we always hope it is my mom," Hatley said. "It's kind of gotten easier to deal with it. We don't get our hopes up, but we do at the same time. As this has been going on for the last three years, it has left old wounds open."
Bobo, a 20-year-old nursing student, was abducted from her home in Decatur County in 2011.
Hatley said she knows how the Bobo family feels.
"I'm just hoping that one day I can have just something, even if it's just a fragment of something," she said. "She deserves a grave, just not somewhere where somebody stuck her to hide her. She deserves a good plot to lay to rest so me and my kids can go visit her."
Hatley said she works to keep memories of her mother alive with pictures and stories of her mother.
She said Baugus was a good mother who had become associated with the wrong people when she disappeared. She "never let her own problems interfere with the mom she could be at the time," Hatley said.
Baugus also had a son, who is now 15.
Hatley said law enforcement did not pay adequate attention to her mother's case because her mother was not a "grade A citizen."
"Because she was into the drugs and everything, they did not do as much," she said. "Law enforcement searched for her for two weeks."
Hatley said that while she hoped the remains were those of her mother, she also wanted the Bobos or the family of some other missing person to find closure and peace.
"It makes us upset and mad that they are not doing for us what they've done for her, but we are happy they are doing something for her," she said. "We are not mad about that. We are very happy that somebody is getting the attention that they deserve."
