A $200,000 reward offered in the 1995 disappearance of Mary Jacqueline Levitz has been halted by her family, but the investigation that drew attention across the country is continuing, Warren County Sheriff Martin Pace said.

Robert Marschall, the attorney representing the estate of the missing heiress, said the termination of the offer resulted from the death of Levitz’s only child, Walter Bolton III, about a year ago. Since Bolton’s death, Marschall said, Levitz’s assets have been distributed to all beneficiaries.

“It’s just financially impractical to continue offering the reward,” said Marschall, whose offices are in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla.

Levitz’s younger sister, Tiki Shivers of Tallulah, said the termination was not disputed.

“If this reward would have been any kind of incentive to produce information, it would have done so by now,” Shivers said.

But reward or no reward, Pace, who 12 years ago walked into Levitz’s home on Riverwood Circle to find its owner missing and a mattress soaked in blood, said the decision will have no effect on the investigation.

“This by no means brings closure to the case,” said Pace, a sheriff’s deputy at the time of the disappearance. “We still have agents with the Warren County Sheriff’s Department, Vicksburg Police Department and FBI meeting monthly to discuss this investigation, and we’ll continue to do so.”

Pace said law enforcement agents have followed up on leads as recently as this month, but still, little has materialized.

Days after the initial discovery, tests revealed the blood found at the home belonged to Levitz, who was heir to the fortune created by Levitz Furniture, a chain of retail stores. Torn false fingernails found scattered on the floor also belonged to the 62-year-old socialite. Her cream-colored Jaguar remained in the driveway. A door to the house was unlocked.

“Jackie” Levitz only weeks earlier had moved to Vicksburg from Florida to be closer to family members who grew up with her near Oak Grove, La.

The story of Levitz’s disappearance was front-page news in The Miami Herald, Washington Post and was reported extensively on television and in the New York Times.

However, a local search that quickly expanded to a nationwide manhunt proved fruitless. In the years since Levitz disappeared, countless leads, retested evidence and statements from witnesses across the country have turned up little.

Before moving to Vicksburg from Palm Beach, Levitz purchased a 2,900-square-foot, ranch-style home at 15 Riverwood Circle. She planned to double the size of the house and immediately began hiring contractors to do the work.

On the day she was last seen, she drove to nearby Midsouth Lumber & Supply on U.S. 61 South to buy materials for the renovation. Less than two days later, James Earl Shivers, Levitz’s brother-in-law, went to her home off Warrenton Road after repeatedly trying to get her to answer the phone. He’s the one who called the sheriff’s department.

One of nine children reared on a cotton farm, Levitz left Louisiana and moved to Texas to attend secretarial school. She married Walter Bolton Jr. and together they had a son, Walter III. But the marriage didn’t last and she moved to Washington, D.C., where she worked in real estate. She amassed her own $4 million fortune by buying, renovating and selling houses.

After her second husband, Banks L. Smith, a prosperous restaurant owner, died, Levitz moved to Florida. Twenty years later in 1987, she married Ralph Levitz, founder of Levitz Furniture. But in early 1995, her third husband died, leaving her a trust fund of several million dollars. Upon her death, the money would pass to his grandchildren from previous marriages. Five years after Levitz vanished, her younger sister Tiki Shivers and Walter Bolton III were appointed executors of Levitz’s estate after a Florida court declared the heiress dead.