On her deathbed, the mother of a missing Skidmore, Mo., man was promised that the search would not stop with her passing.

On Feb. 14, Becky Klino, the mother of Branson Perry, died at her home after a long battle with cancer. A vocal activist in the pursuit of her missing son, she never saw him again after his disappearance almost 10 years ago.

By her side shortly before her death, Monica Caison, founder of the Community United Effort Center for Missing Children and an active supporter of the search for Mr. Perry, told her she would not quit looking for him.

“I promised that we would return to the area and we’d continue looking for Branson,” she said.

On April 11, 2001, Mr. Perry mysteriously disappeared from his family home in Skidmore.

Despite some clues in the case — such as a suspected necklace and pendant of his being found at the home of a man convicted of multiple counts of child pornography — he was never seen again.

With Mr. Perry’s 30th birthday passing on Feb. 24, Jo Ann Stinnett, his grandmother, said she still thinks about him frequently.

“When I see somebody doing something he loved, or especially when I make cream puffs (one of his favorite foods) ... I think of him,” she said.

Despite the fact that she and other residents have looked almost everywhere in the area for him, Ms. Stinnett said she always feels a sense of incompleteness.

“You always think, in your mind, there could be some other place you didn’t look,” she said.

A deputy when the case began, Nodaway County Sheriff Darren White watched the story unfold and was hoping to see it solved before Ms. Klino’s death.

“I think everybody wanted the case to come to some kind of conclusion for her before that happened,” he said.

Currently, Mr. White said, the case has gone without any tips for the past year, but that doesn’t mean his department will stop looking.

“It’s still an important case to us. Nobody deserves to just have vanished from our community,” he said.

An investigator and close friend of Ms. Klino, Sgt. Roger Phillips, an investigator for the drug and crime control division of the Missouri State Highway Patrol, said the case won’t close until it has been solved.

“We’ll relentlessly pursue all leads, even after Becky’s death,” he said. “We will never close this until there is some resolution.”

Despite the looming grimness of the case, a silver lining outlines it, as Ms. Klino’s suffering has now ended. Usually the first to receive tips in regard to the case, Ms. Caison said Ms. Klino joked with her that the tables would turn once she passed on.

“She was kind of funny. She said ‘Whenever I get to where I’m going, I’m going to finally know something before you do,’” Ms. Caison said.

Andrew Gaug can be reached at andrew.gaug@newspressnow.com.