Is baby feared dead in 1984 house fire actually ALIVE? Family search for clues 40 years after blaze as sister who was six years old says she saw toddler get into car with 'bi-racial couple'

Ramona Brown was just three years old when fire destroyed her home in Algiers, Louisiana, killing two of her brothers and leaving the family homeless on March 6, 1984.

She was thought dead too but nothing of her remains was ever found and her then-six-year-old sister Simona has always insisted she saw Ramona being driven away from the scene by a couple in a gold-colored Cadillac.

Forty years on technicians at the National Centre for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) have rendered a photograph to visualize what she would look like today as her family prays for a miracle.

'Whoever has her and knows she doesn't belong to them and should let her know that her family is looking for her,' said Simona.

Aubrey and Johnnie Mae lived with Ramona, who they nicknamed 'Al' and their nine other children in the three-bedroom house in the New Orleans district. 

Ramona Brown was just three years old when fire destroyed her home in Algiers, Louisiana , killing two of her brothers and leaving the family homeless on March 6, 1984 

Technicians at the National Centre for Missing and Exploited Children hope that this newly rendered image of what she would look like today might finally solve the mystery

None of Ramona's remains were found in the three-bedroom house after the blaze

The cause of the fire which broke out in the girls' bedroom was never discovered but it tore through the single-story home killing two-year-old Kevin Brown and four-year-old Aubrey Jr. Brown.

Simona remembered hearing them scream, 'Mom! Dad! Help me, please', and the boys were hugging each other when their bodies were found after the fire.

'My mom was yelling that her babies were inside the house,' Simona's sister Tiffany Nickerson said.

'My daddy was throwing water buckets at the house, and the heat was pushing them back at us.'

Seven children escaped the blaze but there was no sign of Ramona and investigators concluded she had perished in the blaze.

'I remember Simona telling my mom and dad that there was a couple, a biracial couple that stopped and picked up Ramona,' Nickerson said.

'After that, Simona went into a shell. She wouldn't talk for a few years.'

But in 2018 Simona went to the police and they reopened the case. 

Sister Simona Brown was just six at the time of the blaze but always insisted that Ramona was abducted by a couple in a car who stopped to 'help'

Aubrey and Johnnie Mae lived with Ramona and their nine other children in the home 

The blaze claimed the lives of brothers Kevin Brown, two, and Aubrey Jr Brown, four

In 2018 the center released an image of what Ramona would have looked like at 36

'Simona is positive she had Ramona's hand that night,' said Detective Lamar Lewis with the New Orleans Police Department.

'She remembers everything, the car that pulled up and the description of the couple that offered to help the family watch Ramona.

'I spoke with fire investigators, and they said the fire would need to reach thousands of degrees in order to burn everything, meaning bones,' he added.

'Firefighters on the scene said they don't think she was in the house, and I don't think she was in the house.'

Just hours after the fire Ramona's grandmother, Dorothy Nickerson, received a call from a girl she thought was her missing granddaughter.

The voice said, 'Maw?', and when Dorothy asked 'who is this?' the girl replied 'Al'.

But when Dorothy asked her where she was, the call cut off.

Ramona's mother, Johnnie Mae, died from cancer in 2019 never knowing what happened to her daughter.

Sister Tansy Falgout says she would love to see her little sister again 

The family prays that the new image may prompt someone to come forward with information

But investigators are hopeful that the new image may finally solve the decades-old mystery.

'We know that our images can work, even in a missing case like this when many decades have passed,' said Angeline Hartmann of NCMEC.

'We ask people to take just a moment and really look at this image. We just need the right person to see the image and make that call.

'You never know when you might be the person who can help investigators pull the missing pieces together.'

And the family too still lives in hope that their grief may find a resolution.

'It still bothers me,' said sister Tansy Falgout, 'I can't sleep at night, I'll be the only one up in the house walking around.

'I sure wouldn't mind holding her in my arms again.'