Nash woman tried to return from Ohio before she was killed

Spring Hope, N.C. — Ohio authorities said they want to talk with a man whom a Spring Hope woman went to visit before she disappeared last month.

The remains of Nichole Alloway, 20, were found last week in an abandoned house near Otway, Ohio, in the southeastern part of the state. Her family reported her missing on June 10 to police in Portsmouth, Ohio, which is about 20 miles from Otway.

Alloway's grandmother, Diane Dille, said she she had gone to Portsmouth in mid-May to visit Dillon Maring, 18, whom she had met online but had never met in person.

"They had talked for several months prior on the phone and on the Internet, on MySpace," Dille said.

She said her granddaughter wanted a relationship and was considering moving to Ohio with her two children.

Even before she got on the bus to Ohio, however, things didn't feel right.

"She got her first foot on that step and held onto the railing, and she turned to me and said, 'Grandma, I got a bad feeling about this,'" Dille said. "I said, 'Well then, don't go. Stay here.' She said, 'No, I gotta go.'"

Things got worse after Alloway arrived in Ohio, said her sister, Denise Vick.

"He didn't show her any apartments. Nothing added up when she got up there," Vick said. "He just wanted to go out and hang out with all his friends, and she didn't approve of a lot of his friends."

Alloway, who called home daily to check on her children, then asked her family to wire her money for a bus ticket home. Dille said she picked up the money in early June but never got on the bus home.

"The last day I spoke to her on the phone, she told me she loved me and I said I loved her, and that's the last thing we said to each other," Dille said.

Authorities haven't declared Maring a suspect in Alloway's death but said he is one of several people they want to talk to in their investigation.

"You can't trust people," Dille said. "You cannot just take a person off the Internet and take their word for it. You have to check these people out before you do anything."