AUSTIN, Texas — It's the call every parent hopes they never have to get. But five years ago, on New Year’s Eve, a Houston mom received word that her daughter's body had been discovered in a patch of woods in East Austin.
“She was really tender-hearted," said Jillian Coleman Wheeler, Nicole Coleman’s grandmother.
"You just felt so happy and comfortable around her,” added Dawn Coleman, Nicole Coleman’s mother.
“She was a wonderful writer and poet,” Coleman Wheeler said.
For them, there are not enough words to describe how special 23-year-old Nicole Coleman was. They say she was a bright 4.0 college student who started struggling with her mental health when she was a teenager.
“As time went on, she would have like, episodes where she was paranoid, where she was terrified and you couldn't really comfort her because she was living in her own reality,” Coleman Wheeler said.
PHOTOS: What happened to Nicole Coleman?
In November of 2018, Nicole Coleman moved from Houston to Austin to get help. She was living in a duplex off Arnold Drive.
Just after 5:30 p.m., on Dec. 31, 2018, a cyclist and a walker were cutting through the woods on a hike-and-bike trail off Ed Bluestein Boulevard when they stumbled upon Nicole Coleman's body in the brush about 50 yards off US 183.
"She was found deceased, nude and with obvious trauma,” said Det. Daniel Jackson with the Austin Police Department (APD).
“I know someone, someone out there must have seen something. We went yesterday to see where she was found. It's busy. It's a busy road,” Dawn Coleman said.
The Kool Corner off Manor Road and Northeast Drive was the last place Nicole Coleman was seen. Just three days before she was murdered, surveillance cameras showed her walking across the parking lot into the convenience store.
Detectives say as time goes by, people's memories fade and it gets more difficult to solve these cases. However, DNA technology is improving.
"So there's optimism that maybe some of the evidence that we found may, if we get a suspect, lead us to confirming or denying that person was involved,” Jackson said.
Nicole Coleman's family lives in fear, knowing her killer is still out there and others could be in danger.
“That's definitely a huge concern for us. Another family having to lose someone – because I don't understand how someone could be that aggressively angry and just be a one time thing,” Dawn Coleman said.
“It really was such a rage-filled crime," Coleman Wheeler said, adding, “She hoped to become a psychologist so that she could work with other young people who needed support. She hoped to fall in love and marry and have children of her own. That future was denied her."
Jackson said police have spoken to potential suspects, but those leads turned up empty and no arrests have been made. He said APD is still submitting items for DNA testing, and investigators are hopeful that new technology might provide some answers.
If you have any information on what happened to Nicole Coleman, call Crime Stoppers at 512-472-8477. You can remain anonymous.
A reward of up to $1,000 may be available for information that leads to an arrest.
KVUE Daybreak's Yvonne Nava is shining a spotlight on several Central Texas cold cases as part of a monthly series called KVUE Crime Files.