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New Cold Case Detective Assigned To Tiffany Sessions Case

MIAMI (CBS4) - Twenty four years after Tiffany Sessions disappeared, a new cold case detective has been assigned to take another look at the evidence, Patrick Sessions told CBS 4 News.

The detective with the Alachua County Sheriff's Office was hired last month to focus on the case.

"Did I do everything I could do?" Patrick Sessions asked Thursday. "Is there anything else I could be doing?"

He still ponders those questions more than two decades after his daughter was last seen.

"She was, at heart, a good kid, hard worker" Sessions told CBS 4's Lauren Pastrana at his Coconut Grove home. "She was doing great in school, had a lot of dreams."

Tiffany Sessions vanished from Gainesville on February 9, 1989.

The University of Florida student told her roommate she was going for a walk, but never returned.

She would have been 44 years old now.

"Whoever took her, took that away from her. From her, from us, from everybody else," Pat Sessions said.

Investigators said  they never stopped digging in to the Sessions case.

But now, for the first time in more than 20 years, there's a detective devoted entirely to taking a closer look.

Det. Kevin Allen used to work for the Fort Lauderdale Police Dept.

He now works with the Alachua County Sheriff's Office, and Tiffany's case is priority number one.

"24 years is a long time," Allen said during a phone interview Thursday. "We're going to need some luck on this one."

Det. Allen said he's spent the past six weeks getting up to speed. He said he's already found some useful information.

He met with Sessions recently in South Florida to discuss details.

"There are several areas of interest that could be followed up on," Det. Allen said. He said he would rather not share specific details.

But Sessions said he's been in contact with a man who was recently released from jail who claims to know what might have happened to Tiffany.

He said that man was mentioned in the files of evidence accumulated over the years, but somehow, the information slipped through the cracks.

Now that Det. Allen is on the case, Sessions is hoping this new perspective will be the key to finding answers.

"I can't expect them to put a detective on this for 24 years, but we've been lucky and now we've gotten lucky again. This is really important," Sessions said.

Pat Sessions said he is willing to issue a reward for information leading to an arrest and conviction, or to Tiffany's remains.

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