She went for a walk near Marissa in April with a gun and a journal. She never came back.

Debra Wilkerson was prepared for the worst when she reported her daughter missing on April 14 and discovered that a handgun had been taken from their home in Clarmin, an unincorporated community near Marissa.

Brittany Moeser, 36, had struggled with an eating disorder, alcoholism and depression, attempted suicide at least twice and spent time in psychiatric units of hospitals, her mother said.

But Wilkerson and the rest of her large, blended family never imagined they would go two months without a clue of Moeser’s whereabouts or whether she was dead or alive.

“There have been multiple searches for her,” said Wilkerson, 65, a semi-retired nurse and former pharmacy employee. “They’ve searched and searched and searched, and they’ve found nothing.”

It’s believed that Moeser left the home on Edward Street, where she had been living since September, on foot. She wrote her mother and stepfather, Ron Wilkerson, a note saying that she had gone for a walk on Saturday, April 13. She never returned.

Police from several agencies, family, friends, local volunteers, planes, drones and dogs searched about a square mile of woods, farm fields and yards around the home in the week after her disappearance, according to Justin Maynard, Debra Wilkerson’s son and Moeser’s half-brother.

At one point, a dog followed Moeser’s scent to a nearby road, leading some to speculate that she got into a vehicle and left the area, the family said. But they think that scenario is unlikely because she normally kept in contact to let her mother know she was safe.

“I would like to see a bigger area searched,” said Maynard, 44, an art teacher at Marissa Junior/Senior High School.

In the past month, Maynard has been searching on his own on foot and ATV, using a hunting app to trace his steps, but it’s slow going with one person. He’s hoping to get help from the community for another large-scale search.

Maynard also would like people to be on the lookout in the region between County Road 12 and Illinois 153, noting that Moeser could have easily walked more than a mile.

“I feel so sorry for them, I really do,” said neighbor Sandy Wagner, 59, whose rural Tilden property was searched. “I don’t know what they’re going through, but I understand it, when you can’t find your own child.

“I hope she hasn’t passed away. I hope she’s alive. With those mental-health situations, you just never know what’s going to happen.”

Geographical complication

Clarmin consists of six streets with tall trees, a Baptist church and about 40 homes, mostly mobile and modular. The unincorporated community is in Washington County, but it’s on the Randolph County border to the south and St. Clair County border to the west.

Family members feel this geography has hampered the investigation into Moeser’s disappearance because Washington County Sheriff’s Office is the agency in charge, but leads from other counties are turned over to Illinois State Police.

There seems to be a lack of communication between agencies and frequent turnover among investigators, the family said.

“I never got the idea that there was a central command,” said Ron Wilkerson, 65, a retired truck driver. “When somebody has reached out to us, it’s a new name, a new person every time.”

Trooper Josh Robinson, an Illinois State Police public information officer, confirmed that Washington County had asked for ISP’s assistance with the case. He referred further questions to that office.

The sheriff’s office has posted a news release about Moeser’s disappearance on Facebook several times, most recently on Monday. Sheriff Ross Schultze is personally overseeing the investigation, according to Chief Deputy Charles Carroll.

“We’ve been doing everything we possibly can to find Brittany,” Carroll said Wednesday. “It’s just been dead end after dead end. We’re continuing to work on locating her.

“We’ve had dogs out searching. We’ve had drones up. We’ve talked to all the neighbors. We’ve looked for video. We’ve done everything we’re supposed to do. This is a really weird situation, 100 percent. It’s almost as if she just disappeared into thin air.”

The office now is waiting on results of a search warrant served on Moeser’s cellphone provider to get call and text records.

Last week, deputies responded to a lead from a farmer who found an Adidas windbreaker in a field, family members said. They searched the area but found no other clues, and Debra Wilkerson doesn’t believe the windbreaker belonged to Moeser.

The family worries that passage of time is causing people to forget about Moeser’s disappearance. But Village Collector Donna Stewart and Marissa Public Library Cataloger Brandi Meyer said Tuesday that it’s still weighing on minds of area residents.

Stewart noted that Debra Wilkerson is well known in the village (population 1,781), and her children attended Marissa schools.

“Everybody is aware of (the missing-person case),” Meyer said. “I had a guy discuss it with me this morning at the library. He was wondering if anything had happened with the case.”

Mental-health diagnosis

Moeser attended lower grades at Marissa schools and graduated from Christ Our Savior Lutheran High School in Evansville, Indiana. She had attention deficit disorder, developed an eating disorder in fourth grade and started drinking heavily after high school, Debra Wilkerson said.

Moeser lived about 15 years in Chicago, where she helped a friend with a real-estate business, served as hostess at a restaurant managed by her boyfriend and worked at a book bindery.

Moeser’s mental health deteriorated, and during a hospital stay after one of her suicide attempts, she was diagnosed with bi-polar disorder with psychosis, her mother said. That indicates the presence of delusions or hallucinations or both, according to the National Institutes of Health.

“She came here to get help and be closer to family,” Debra Wilkerson said of Moeser’s move to Clarmin in September.

After Moeser’s most recent hospitalization in January, she was taking medication and seemed stable, her mother said. She enjoyed writing and kept a journal, and her cooking specialty was homemade pretzels.

“She was a homebody,” Debra Wilkerson said.

The family provided the following details of what happened on April 13, a warm and sunny Saturday:

• Moeser was watching TV when Ron Wilkerson left their home about 11:30 a.m. to go to his grandson’s ball game.

• Debra Wilkerson arrived home from work about 2 p.m.

• Debra Wilkerson found a note from Moeser on the kitchen island, saying she had taken the family’s dog, Romeo, outside to use the bathroom and was going for a walk.

• Moeser never returned, and the Wilkersons filed a missing-person report on April 14.

• Investigators asked if the family had any firearms, and Ron Wilkerson discovered that a handgun was missing from a black ammunition pouch in the bedroom.

• Also gone was Moeser’s journal.

Debra Wilkerson said she and her husband never used the gun and hadn’t thought about it being accessible. She noted that neither of Moeser’s suicide attempts had involved firearms.

“In the beginning, it was very hard,” Debra Wilkerson said. “We dropped the ball so badly. Not intentionally, but still we did because (the gun) should have been locked up.

“I kept telling my husband, ‘It was our fault. It was our fault. It was our fault. It was preventable.’ But then other people say, ‘If she wanted to do something to herself, she would have found another way.’”

Torn between hope and reality

Carroll declined to discuss specific leads in the Moeser case due to the ongoing investigation. None have involved people actually seeing her on or after April 13, according to the family.

One odd development is that three weeks after the initial search, Moeser’s down coat turned up in a clearing with a camper near the Wilkerson home. In the pocket was a candy wrapper that matched a wrapper found in a backpack across the road, family members said.

On a missing-person flyer, Moeser is described as 36 years old, standing at 5-foot-7 and weighing 128 pounds with light red hair. Her mother believes she was wearing athletic pants, tennis shoes and an oversized T-shirt.

“Suffers from an unspecified medical condition,” the flyer reads.

In recent weeks, Moeser’s family has been caught between holding out hope that she’s alive and facing the reality that she might be dead.

On June 5, Moeser’s stepsister, Jamie Hamon, posted a Facebook message, asking if someone could help her start a GoFundMe campaign to raise money for a private investigator.

“There are no clues, no more searches (apparently), no answers at this point,” she wrote. “This is a real person completely gone.... She is loved so much by so many people probably more than she ever realized which in itself is heartbreaking.

“With no clues, or leads the investigation has come to a standstill. My sister’s case CANNOT go cold!!! We can’t just give up. We miss her everyday, every hour.”

On Tuesday, Maynard and the Wilkersons struck a less-optimistic tone after having a honest talk.

Debra Wilkerson said when five law-enforcement vehicles pulled up to her home last week to tell her about the windbreaker lead, her first thought was that Moeser’s body had been found.

“I don’t think she’s alive,” Maynard said. “Too much time has passed. If she’d write a note to take a walk because she didn’t want Mom to worry, she would have contacted Mom by now.

“We’re two months deep. I feel like she’s out here somewhere, or she got into a vehicle with a bad person, and they did something to her.”

Washington County Sheriff’s Office asks that anyone with information about Moeser’s disappearance contact that office at 618-327-8274, ext. 4. Her family also has set up a Gmail account, BringBritHome@gmail.com, for people interested in helping with searches.