The year was 1975. Newlyweds Dean and Denise Newsom Porch had just moved to Charlotte, North Carolina. It was quite a change for 21-year-old Denise, who was born and raised in the tiny town of Denton, North Carolina. “It’s a big difference,” Denise’s sister, Diane Hill, told Dateline.
Diane remembers how nervous the family was when Denise moved just over an hour away to the city. “We really weren’t excited about her even going to Charlotte,” she recalled. “But that’s what she wanted to do.”
It wasn’t too long after that move that those fears became terrifyingly real for Denise’s family.
On July 31, 1975, Denise disappeared from the Yorktown Apartments complex, where she lived with Dean.
Denise was the youngest of three sisters. “She was very outgoing,” Diane said. “She was a good student at school, and she was very active.” Growing up, Diane and Denise were close. “We got to share a lot of time together,” Diane said. “Our fondest memories were going to the beach and having a good time with our family.” Eventually, Diane said, Denise met her husband at the beach. The couple had only been married a year when Denise went missing.
According to Diane, Dean arrived home from working in Gastonia, North Carolina, on July 31, sometime after 5:00 p.m. He discovered Denise’s wallet and keys in the apartment, alongside groceries that hadn’t been put away. “Her husband called and talked to my mama and said he came home and all her stuff was on the table,” Diane said. “He couldn’t find her anywhere.” The family reported Denise missing, and the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department began investigating.
NBC affiliate WSOC-TV Channel 9 has been covering the case since Denise’s disappearance, and featured an archival video of 1975 news coverage in a 2023 article. At that time, Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department Lt. Bryan Crum commented on the initial investigation. “They started a canvass in earnest. This was after the husband had asked around to see have you seen Denise,” he told WSOC-TV.
Denise worked as a resident manager in the apartment building where the couple lived on the third floor. The office was on the first floor, and Diane said that’s where Denise usually spent the workday. Denise was responsible for showing available apartments to potential tenants. Investigators identified an 11-minute window when they believed Denise went missing, according to Diane. “Somebody saw her,” Diane recalled. “And then somebody else came shortly after.” But by then, Denise was nowhere to be found.
“We know that some folks had last seen Denise riding in her car with two folks who were unidentified -- no one knows who they are,” Crum told WSOC-TV. “That wasn’t unusual at the time, she might have somebody hop in the car to drive them over to take a look at a particular unit.”
In retrospect, Diane says she can now see the risks of Denise’s job. “She showed people their apartments, and she would get in the car with them,” she said. “Today we know better, but at that time, you know, it was OK.” There’s no clear evidence as to what happened that day, but Diane doesn’t believe it was her sister’s choice to disappear. “We don’t know if that’s what happened,” she said. “But I feel sure it was foul play, whatever it was.”
In the wake of Denise’s disappearance, the family’s worry was enormous. Diane and her husband moved into her mother’s house in Denton to make sure she was OK. “We stayed there for a good while,” she recalled. Denise’s disappearance shocked their family and their small hometown. “It’s just something you don’t ever think would happen,” Diane said.
“My mother got letters from everybody in the country, you know, trying to find out stuff, trying to help her and police,” Diane recalled. And she heard talk of reported sightings. “There was a lot of that going on, and people saw her running down the highway, and people saw this, and people saw that,” she said. “But nothing ever panned out.”
Diane’s uncles helped with the search, posting missing posters around the state, and even issuing a $25,000 reward at the time, but nothing was ever found. “We never had any inkling as to where she is or where she was,” Diane said.
According to Diane, police kept the family up to date as much as they could, but over the years, it slowed down. In 1982, seven years after Denise’s disappearance, the family had her declared legally dead. “That was very hard for my mom to do,” Diane said. “She worried about it for months afterwards.” But life was carrying on, Diane said. And the family had to move forward, even in their grief. “It was always on your mind, but then you just had to live your life,” Diane said. “I had to keep going.”
Diane told Dateline that Dean Porch struggled in the aftermath of his wife’s disappearance. “He just never could get over all of it,” she said. Dean later remarried. He died in 2011.
“After so many years, you just — you know she’s not coming home,” Diane said. She checks in with the CMPD once or twice a year to ask for updates. “They guarantee me that it’s open, that it’s not a closed case.”
Dateline reached out to the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department to request an interview about Denise’s case. In response, they said that while the case “is still being worked,” no one was available to speak about it.
According to Diane, at the time of Denise’s disappearance, investigators searched fields and open land for any sign of her, but nothing was ever recovered. Diane still hopes that a chance discovery of Denise’s remains could grant the family the answers they’ve waited for. “A lot of times you see these cases on TV, you know, they find this person’s been gone for 35 years, they find remains,” she said. “I guess that’s what I’m hoping for.”
Of course, Charlotte has changed a lot in 50 years, which has created a challenge for any potential discovery. “They probably have grown so much over there that a lot of their vast land has been filled up with buildings,” Diane said. “I feel like she’s probably under some great big building over there.”
A half-century later, Denise is remembered by the community in Denton, where Diane still lives. “We live in a really small town, and everybody was just really upset about it,” Diane said. “And today, they still ask, you know, if I see somebody that hasn’t seen me in a while, they will eventually ask me about it.”
If you have any information about Denise’s case, please contact CMPD’s Missing Person Unit at 704-336-2311 or Crime Stoppers at 704-334-1600.