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Xavier Breland and Ciera Locklair Breland are shown in happier times during the documentary show “Disappeared.”
Ciera Locklair Breland has been missing for more than eight months, and there have been few leads coming in to determine what happened to the new mom and Habersham County native.
Ciera was featured on the show “Disappeared” on Wednesday night, chronicling the investigation that has spanned from Georgia to Indiana and back again with no success.
After spending most of her formative years in Habersham County, Ciera’s family moved to White County, where her parents Nick and Kelly still reside. Ciera’s mom was a paralegal, and she followed in her footsteps to become one of the top lawyers in the country, as cited in Wednesday’s documentary.
During the trail end of the 2020 pandemic, Ciera met her husband, Xavier Breland, on Tinder.
“She was bubbling over with love,” Kelly said. “They were inseparable.”
Her father Nick noted that he was very protective of his daughter when she was young as it related to boyfriends. But at the outset of her relationship with Breland, Nick noted that he “treated her like a queen.”
Ciera became pregnant in April 2021, and she married Breland through a justice of the peace over Zoom shortly after. Her son Jaxson was born in October 2021.
Around Christmas, Breland and Ciera came to the Locklairs’ home looking haggard and run down. Nick said on “Disappeared” that they said someone was chasing them, claiming that Breland’s ex-wife was involved with some people in some kind of drug cartel.
“She feared for her life, she lost weight,” Kelly said on the show. “This is not Ciera. This is not my daughter.”
Kelly added that she felt “Xavier was manipulating her, keeping her in a paranoid and afraid state for his own purposes.”
Ciera’s cousin Shelby Campbell spoke on “Disappeared” as well and noted that she knew of many domestic conflicts that took place between the Brelands, including some that got physical. Ciera sent pictures of where she was injured in scuffles with her husband to relatives in case they were needed later in a court proceeding.
In February of this year, Breland, Ciera Jaxson and their dog Baker drove from their Indiana home to visit family in Georgia. They stopped first in White County to see the Locklairs, where Ciera confided in her parents that she was ready to leave her husband for good.
Campbell said Ciera told her she was moving some money into a secret account and preparing to leave her husband. “I’m done. I’m leaving. I don’t want this any more,” Ciera texted.
The family left there together and went to see Breland’s mother in Johns Creek, which is where Ciera was last seen alive on a surveillance camera standing at the doorway of her mother-in-law’s home at 7:17 p.m. on Feb. 23. That also was the last day Nick received a text from his daughter, who said she was not feeling well that day but was getting better.
Breland reported Ciera missing three days later from Indiana, claiming that the family returned there together after visiting his mother. But “Disappeared” reported that surveillance cameras that captured Breland on the way home to Indiana showed only him getting out of the car, getting gas, going into the store and then leaving. The cameras never showed Ciera, their son or their dog at any time.
Breland told police that he and his wife argued over her running out of Adderall and asking for some of his. When he refused, she allegedly walked out and left angrily around 11 p.m. But there were irregularities that made the story take on water with Ciera’s family.
“No one believes Xavier’s story that she walked off without her phone, her keys, her baby or her dog,” Campbell said. “It was 20 degrees out. It is beyond believability.”
Officers in Indiana and Georgia combed the areas where Ciera had been known to be with K9s. Subpoenas for her phone records showed she was in the area of the Chattahoochee River near her mother-in-law’s home at some point, and they dredged the river and searched from the air, only to find nothing.
They also had the dogs sniff the car that Breland said the family traveled back to Indiana in, but they came up empty as well.
“Those dogs which are very good weren’t picking up any scent – nothing,” Nick said. “If she rode up there 10 hours in that car, the dogs would have known it.”
After canvassing neighborhoods and checking surveillance footage from various Johns Creek residents in the area, one camera picked up what appeared to be Ciera’s car driving by.
Det. Eric Rozier of the Johns Creek Police Department said he knew who was driving the car, but could not reveal that on the show because the case is active and has not been presented to a grand jury.
A tip about Baker’s microchip that was scanned in Kentucky turned out to be a year old, so that led to nothing. Another tip from a woman at a casino who said she saw Ciera also was a bust.
“We are looking for anything to fill in the gaps,” Rozier said.
Breland later was filmed on a video chat with his other children saying that Ciera had been kidnapped. That conflicted with his initial statement that she just walked off and never came back.
Breland was found not guilty in a stalking case in Coweta County earlier this month involving his ex-wife and released from prison on Aug. 16. He was arrested on a new warrant the next day in Fulton County and put back in jail, once again with no bond. He has been identified as a person of interest in the case.
“Lots of things go through your mind when your child is missing and you have thoughts that a specific person is responsible,” Kelly said. “We should have seen the signs.”
The FBI in Atlanta is offering a reward of up to $10,000 for information leading to her whereabouts. Anyone with information surrounding the case is asked to call Cpl. Rozier with the Johns Creek Police Department at 678-372-8046, the Carmel Police Department at (317) 571-2580, Crime Stoppers of Central Indiana at 317-262-TIPS (8477), the Georgia Bureau of Investigation tip line at 1-800-597-TIPS(8477) or the FBI at 1-800-CALL-FBI (225-5324).