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(NewsNation) — The family of a missing teenager has searched for 20 excruciating years as a trail of secrets and sightings has failed to result in finding their daughter.

The beauty of small-town Burleson, Texas, is that it’s the ideal place to grow up and build a foundation … at least for most. Samantha Tapp’s sister said life in their home was rough.

Samantha Tapp had difficult time at home

Kendale Wyatt said life in the suburbs of Fort Worth, Texas, wasn’t easy due to their adoptive mother.

“There obviously was abuse. She definitely believed in corporal punishment,” Wyatt said. “It did tend to spiral out of control. Where she used to just use the paddle, she then would just lash out and smack us [with] whatever she had: phone cord, hanger, shoe.”

Unmoored, the sisters were split up to live with relatives. It took an especially hard toll on 16-year-old Tapp.

“[She was] hanging out with boys all the time. I know that she stole the car,” Wyatt said.

Tapp, known to her friends and family by her nickname Sam, was eventually brought to live with Wyatt and their grandparents.

She began working hard to keep getting good grades at Burleson High School. Still, she had struggles, in part because of challenges with her mental health.

“She was not on her medication anymore. She was on medication for bipolar disorder, but when she came to live with us, she wasn’t on it anymore,” Wyatt said. “But I also wasn’t having to get her dressed in the morning and drag her to school. She seemed like she was thriving for a while.”

As things were improving, Wyatt moved across town to live with her boyfriend and his family. That’s where she was when she was surprised by a knock on the door. It was Tapp.

“She wanted to stay there. She said that she had gotten in an argument with my grandfather, and she didn’t want to stay there anymore,” Wyatt said. “I told her that she was going to have to go back, at least for now, until I could figure out a way for her to legally stay with me.”

But what Wyatt didn’t know at the time was that she’d never see her little sister again.

“I figured she would come back, but she didn’t. I wish that I could have ran after her right away and just for her to stay because she didn’t feel like she had to run away from me,” Wyatt said.

Samantha Tapp disappears

Private investigator Jason Watts says Tapp didn’t vanish without a trace.

A few days after she went missing in October of 2004, some of her clothing was taken from her grandparents’ home. Cigarette butts were left behind.

“When I first began looking into the case, there was nothing,” Watts said. “I mean, all you had was a flyer on the internet. That’s it. No podcast, no news article online, nothing.”

Tapp was classified as a runaway. Weeks passed, then months, and still, there was no word from the teenager. Watts wants to know why.

“What has become of her? Why has she not made contact with any family in almost 20 years?” Watts asked.

He was brought on the case years later and says Burleson police did not get information on crucial sightings in real-time over the years.

Clues left behind in search for Samantha Tapp

NewsNation was told that Tarrant County deputies, who cover the area around Fort Worth, ran Tapp’s name through the National Crime Information Center (NCIC) database. So did the police in Copperas Cove, Texas.

One intriguing hit came in June of 2014 at the Dallas-Fort Worth airport, where customs ran Tapp’s name and birthdate. It happened nearly a decade after she disappeared.

“We ran these possible sightings down as far as we reasonably could. But unfortunately, just like with the Burleson PD, by the time we got to them, any records as to why these hits occurred has been lost,” Watts said.

In 2007, an uncle said Tapp called, asking if she could come live with him in San Antonio, Texas.

“Then, at some point, she called back and said never mind, she wasn’t coming there, that she had met some man and was moving to Melbourne, Florida,” Wyatt said. “Which is weird.”

That story changed in 2015 when it was relayed to authorities again. In the later version, Tapp had actually shown up at her uncle’s home with an infant in tow. But the uncle’s wife didn’t recognize her and reportedly turned her away.

Those bits of information add up to a trail that’s been difficult to follow.

“You could treat these things sort of like breadcrumbs, perhaps,” Watts said. “The problem is, we are unable to verify them or confirm them, so we don’t know that they are, in fact, breadcrumbs of Samantha Tapp.”

Asking Samantha Tapp to come home

Age-progressed photos show what Tapp might look like today as a woman in her 30s. Investigators and Wyatt are also working to let Tapp know that any trouble she might have been in as a minor has long passed.

“She is not wanted or being sought after for any reason,” Watts said. “If that is the reason she is scared to come forward, she does not need to worry about that anymore.”

What is waiting for Tapp is a loving sister.

“I missed having her present. Having been adopted and her being the only family that I had as a constant, it’s hard not to have that now,” Wyatt said.

NewsNation reached out to the Burleson Police Department but did not receive a response.

Tapp would be 36 today and is described as a white woman with brown hair, likely between 5 feet, 4 inches and 5 feet, 6 inches in height. Anyone with information regarding the whereabouts of Samantha Leighann Tapp can contact the Burleson Police Department at 817-426-9903 or the Texas Department of Public Safety Missing Persons Clearinghouse at 512-424-5074.