Text Version:
(Introduction to show begins)
TODD MATTHEWS (Missing Pieces Host): This is Missing Pieces. I’m Todd Matthews. Tonight we have Barbara Campbell. Welcome Barbara.
BARBARA CAMPBELL (Guest): Thank you.
TODD: You’re a little nervous tonight.
BARBARA: Yeah, I am.
TODD: It’s okay, we’re really laid back here and everything is really, really smooth, so no worries. You have a missing sister; can you give us her name?
BARBARA: Elizabeth Ann Campbell.
TODD: And she’s been missing for how long?
BARBARA: Almost 20 years, since April 25, 1988.
TODD: Wow.
BARBARA: The last known possible sighting of her was around midnight at Copperas Cove in Killeen, Texas, off of Highway 190 at a 7-11 convenience store.
TODD: On Rancier Avenue, was that the name of the avenue?
BARBARA: No, that is where she used to work at.
TODD: Okay.
BARBARA: In Killeen, at the 7-11 at Rancier, but this is just mainly off of Highway 190; it is conjoined with Martin Luther Blvd, it‘s right in the corner of it.
TODD: Okay and she’s been missing almost as long as she was alive. She was 20 years old at the time she went missing.
BARBARA: Yes. Yes. Although it is just like 20 years has passed, I mean it doesn’t…to me and the rest of my family, the years or the days or the hours doesn’t really seem like its moving. It seems like we’re reliving the day that we found out that she was missing, and we’re reliving that over and over but there’s so much we could do within 20 years, I mean, we’re running around now in circles, and coming on to something like your show or even posting on the Internet, that I do daily, to get anyone to read my sister’s story and say, “Yes, I think I know this” or “Yes, I know that” and just giving us an answer that I, and especially for my mother and my father, I’m praying that they will get it.
TODD: Well, you should have it. You should have it and I hope we can do something to help you, at least let you be heard, that’s the main thing. You know, I know that a missing family member…I’ve had a lot of people that I’ve talked to over time, and if you feel like maybe you have a place to go. You know I have a brother and sister that are deceased and at least I know where they are, you know I can go visit their grave. It still hurts and it will never stop, but at least you have a way to have that closure and you can go visit with them as best you can and move forward with your life.
BARBARA: I’ve always heard my Mom…pretty much…either she’ll be talking with my father or she’ll just sit around and she’ll be just staring at…we have sort of like a make-shift memorial in the formal living room, and it’s all the pictures of her life before the last picture was taken, and my Mom will sit there and she will talk to Elizabeth like she’s really there, and I’ve heard her many times, “Before I leave this world, I must know where you are.” And that has now become mainly my goal and we always have this big sign where…I mean, it’s big, you can see it from far, it’s pretty much everybody’s same goal in life, it’s “Never Give Up The Search For Elizabeth” and that is my goal until I die, and if I have kids, we’re going to take it down all the way through until we find an answer.
TODD: You know, when you grow up with your sister or your brother, are you older, you’re younger than she was right?
BARBARA: Yeah, I’m older than her, not by much though. It was almost like 1-2-3 of us, you know, the youngest kid was almost back to back.
TODD: You know if she had been there with you, you probably wouldn’t have been as involved in her life as you are now. It’s funny but because she’s gone, has it not consumed everything?
BARBARA: I’ve always been a part of her life. Growing up, we were inseparable; we played with each other, we had the same friends, and she was a little bit smaller than me, of course, she was almost able to go a grade level higher if they would have allowed her to, but she took advanced courses and some of my courses that I was taking, she was allowed to take to, even though being 2 years younger than me, she was able to take a lot of my classes, and we were pretty much almost with each other growing up and then, now, she’s still with me. I mean it’s almost like you were a Siamese twin and someone just rudely took the half of you and just ripped it out and I know my mother would tell you that it’s like someone just took her heart and took it out and stole it and somehow she’s surviving without a heart beating. Now she has to find this heart and bring it back home so she could live and know if her daughter is alive, if Elizabeth is alive. I mean its fine, let’s bring her home, if she’s confused and lost and doesn’t know who she is, well at least we know who she is and we can work with it. If she doesn’t want to come home to us because she doesn’t know us and she is afraid of us, that part of the closure is fine, at least, we’ll know she’s alive, and if she’s living somewhere, hopefully in a good situation. But now, if she’s dead, and she has been dead from the day one, whoever has taken her, or whoever has killed her, they need to let us know where she is. Personally, the family, we have nothing against them, we have no hatred, no nothing, no fight, well actually we do have hatred because they killed our loved one, but we’re not after them. The main goal is, like I said, is to get Elizabeth back, and it would be just wonderful, right now, if they were listening to this broadcast and they said, “Fine, let’s bring her home” and I will thank them from the bottom of my heart and then I will finally fulfill my goal to find my sister for my family, especially my Mom and my Dad, before they leave this world.
TODD: So how have they dealt with it over the years, the past 20 years?
BARBARA: Well my father, he does, I mean each and every one of us has our own personal blame, “If we did this. If we didn’t do this. If we had known this and that.” I know the guilt is not upon us because we didn’t know that this would happen but it’s hard not to have that guilt behind your head because if you had known that this could have happened, we would have stopped it, but you don’t know what’s going to happen the second after just right now, and we have for 20 years, every one of us have this little one part of guilt that we wish we had done this to stop that. But, we do talk, some of us we talk…my mother and I we talk a lot, and my father, in his own way, he talks, my other siblings, in their own way, they do talk but they, it’s more hurtful on them a little bit because they were in the area before my sister had the last call, she was at her boyfriend’s house in Killeen, Texas. They had this argument about studying and about, she was a 7-11 employee at the time and the boyfriend wanted her to get stock and do this, go to the stock meeting, and my sister said “No, I’m about to go to Bryan’s Product Station, I’m going to transfer and I’m going to end the 7-11. Why should I go to a stock meeting if I’m going to quit?”
TODD: uh huh
BARBARA: And, of course, they had the boyfriend/girlfriend argument as such, but my brother was in Killeen driving around just seeing friends and then my sister was in Killeen also, working at another 7-11 store far away, and each of them said that if they knew that Elizabeth was in an argument and wanting to come home right now and the boyfriend said that yes he would take her, because my mother heard that he screamed that he was going to take her. And she was calling home to Lampasas, that’s where we lived at that time, to tell someone to pick her up, and I was going to go ahead and do it but no, he screamed and said that he would do it, but in my own way I wish I had just gone into the car and got her anyway. But, from there, she stormed out of his house, and I know my sister is dramatic if she’s angry, I mean, if you push her beyond the limits, she will let you know she leaving and she’s had enough of you, and somehow she made it from Killeen all the way to Copperas Cove. We do have it confirmed that she did have one ride, but from that we don’t know what happened. It’s like someone just mysteriously made her vanish.
TODD: So what to do you think? Do you think if she were alive that could cut off all contact with you?
BARBARA: At that time, I had a lot of speculation, because that time it was during the National Guard training weekend, and they had a lot of people from California coming into Fort Hood, that’s the army base that we were nearby. They were going into the field there at…it was constantly being traveled, the army reserve was doing training from almost everywhere in parts of the United States into Fort Hood, and they were going in and out. Maybe one of them possibly picked her up and then could have done something, or could have been just a complete stranger knowing that she was out there trying to wait for a ride and said, “Hey” real nicely, and said, “I will take you” and she trusted them, and that was an error in judgment, first error in judgment in life that she had done. She trusted that someone would take her home. And a lot of times…because lately from almost 20 years now, I have heard that a lot of times cops could be bad and it goes from cops to National Guard to even a stranger or even the customers that she had dealt with because she deals with a lot of people in 7-11, in and out. Maybe one of them she knew as a customer and who had lied and grabbed her. Everybody has so much speculation of who it could be but we don’t really know because, so far, we haven’t had a confirmed, actual sighting that, yes it was this person.
TODD: Okay, we’ll talk a little bit about her now. Date of disappearance is April 25, 1988. Her date of birth is May 31, 1967. She was 20 years old, height 5’2”, 96-106 pounds, chestnut brown hair, eyes are brown, she wears glasses. Her race would be considered White and Asian. What about the scars on her forehead and the scars on her chin?
BARBARA: Well on her chin, you can see the scar on her chin a little bit better, she fell onto one of those German heater things, but the scar on top of her head, if she wears bangs and kind of pulls it back, you can see a little scar of missing hair, you could see the scar there. It’s just barely noticeable but you can see it. She also has a mole in between her shoulder blades, almost mid way, and I’m trying to remember other things to picture of her.
TODD: She had a scar on her elbow and right eyebrow.
BARBARA: Yeah, she has…well the right eyebrow is barely noticeable unless you are right in her face. She has a mole on her elbow, of course that sticks out, and I mean, as far as that she’s a very…I don’t know actually, I still remember her and I always would say she’s a very kind-hearted person, she would help anybody and anyone that needed it. I mean, if you needed $1 for a Coke, she would give you more than that, she would help you, and I pray that that’s still her because I know, in the 20 years, a lot of things have happened, and I just don’t want to lose the image of my sister as she is to me still, but I know I have to face reality that she may have changed a lot.
TODD: uh huh
BARBARA: Especially if I could talk to her, I speak for the whole family. “We do not blame you Elizabeth. We don’t blame you for this situation. You didn’t ask for it, we didn’t ask for it, and if you are afraid of coming back home, if you can hear us, don’t be afraid because we don’t blame you. We all love you and miss you and we want you back home. We can work with this. If you don’t want to talk about what happened, fine, you won’t have to, just come home…I’m sorry…
TODD: That’s okay. I just want to let you finish. I want you to get this out. Do you…you sound like you’ve got 2 different ways. In some ways you seem like you’re almost positive she might have…that something bad happened to her, and the other way you feel like maybe she’s still out there listening.
BARBARA: Yes. I had a private investigator, a female, come down from California to help us at one time, and for 19 years her sister was missing and, oddly, they found out that she was 40 miles away, and the person who abducted her sister, I mean, he’d done so much damage to her brain and everything, that she now has to have mental health and everything, but he got tired of her and sent her home after 19 years, and in some ways, I feel like maybe that could happen to us. Then, at the same time, all of us know that we have to face the fact that there is a possibility she had possibly had died that night or a little bit later. We have to look, even though we don’t want to look, at the fact that she might have gone a long time ago. We do know that we have to recognize or realize that that could have been her fate as well.
TODD: Now what happened during this past 19 years? I read something about that after 4 years the family discovered her purse had been found sitting in the police property room.
BARBARA: Yes.
TODD: Now tell me about that. What happened here?
BARBARA: Well, in the beginning, it’s a strange thing, we had almost described that she had a maroon purse before we went to the road. We’ve sent out flyers to everybody, the local state police to the sheriff’s department and then, I believe 2 years before the finding of the purse, we went to California way and I even actually stopped at that town, it’s Ozona, and I went and talked to the sheriff and gave him the flyer and did my description of everything that she possibly could have in the purse, to what she was wearing that night. And what ticks me off still to this day, I was within feet to that property room and I could have turned around and saw my sister’s purse sitting there, but it took some other deputy transferring from Austin, Texas, to there, finding it 2 years later, getting it ready to be auctioned off on Alliance Club annual auction. And he saw that the driver’s license, the military ID that she had at that time, and the bank statements, and he ran across her original social security card and was furious why hasn’t anybody claimed it? He went then to the computer and punched in her social and found out she was missing. From there, he called the Copperas Cove Police Department at the time that the Lieutenant Austin, he was a sergeant at that time, now he’s a lieutenant, and found out that yes she is still missing. Then he went and said that he had the purse and picked everything back up and put everything back into the purse and waited for the investigator to come and claim it, and a few days later we found out that pretty much that’s when the purse was found. Immediately my mother and I got into the car and drove to there because we had a lot of questions to the sheriff, which now was at that time, a new sheriff, but we had a question to the new sheriff, even the old sheriff, “Why this long you have the purse and you did not call us or ask why is not anybody claiming it?” And he was blaming it, unfortunately the sheriff at that time that I had talked to had passed away, he kept blaming it onto that sheriff, and it’s easy to blame it on a dead person because he can’t get up and fight back.
TODD: uh huh
BARBARA: But then I asked a question, which he has not ever answered me the right way, “If you take over any office, it doesn’t matter if it’s old, new, whatever, you’re supposed to have taken an inventory of what have, who you are having employed with.” I asked him that and he was like, “Uh…Uh,” and then finally he said, “Yes.” Then I said, “They why have you not found my sister’s purse back in 1989 when you took over? Why did it have to take a stranger, from being transferred, finding it?” And the whole time, and I bet you still to this day he’ll blame it on the dead sheriff and not him. He’s at fault too because he didn’t take proper inventory of this stuff.
TODD: Now a little bit more about the purse, now what we don’t know is really scary…it had been found and turned into the police, it is estimated that the purse was found somewhere between the 25th of April, 1988 and January 1st of 1989. There are no records of who found, or who turned in the purse, or the exact date that the purse was found. That’s very vital information.
BARBARA: Right, and the Austin Crime Lab of Texas, they did analysis trying to see if it had been sitting out in the sun or even the rain and weather, or it it’s been thrown out of the window. They said that no it has not, there’s no evidence of such. It’s almost like that person who actually was the person who…possibly the kidnapper or abductor or even the accomplices, I don’t know how they say that word, they turned…they actually handed in the purse themselves of they left it in close environment and someone else found it.
TODD: Well, it’s even possible that somebody that might have been helping her get somewhere, she might have left it in their car and they found something’s wrong and maybe I need to take this back, but that person would have been a potential witness as to where she might have went to.
BARBARA: Right.
TODD: So a lot of data was lost when they didn’t get that particular information.
BARBARA: I know that all law enforcement doesn’t do this, but Ozona, at that time, their way of handling stuff, it just really pissed me off that they didn’t do standard procedure like they should of.
TODD: And sometimes it’s…they didn’t know to, you know, I guess it just depends. It should be better but I don’t think there’s a lot of malicious intent or just complete disregard, sometimes I don’t think they know to do certain things, especially a newer police officer, rather than somebody that’s dealt with these things before but, you know, these are people’s lives that we have to take really good care of as best we can but sometimes it doesn’t happen.
BARBARA: Yeah. It’s so hard to really see your point of view on this, because I hear the words but I mean, since I’m a victim of this…
TODD: Yeah.
BARBARA: …and my sister is a victim of this, you can’t see the other half of it. You always, unfortunately, will see the bad part of it. I do know that law enforcement tries and there are so many citizens out there and so little of them, they can’t take care of everything, but it’s so hard to really open your eyes to that when you’ve been the victim of it.
TODD: Well, it’s just like you said, with the killer though, if somebody has done this and all you want is her back, you know, “All is forgotten if you’ll just put us to where we need to be with this and put her back in our hands,” maybe there’s a way you can start fresh with law enforcement, “All is forgiven, just please help us now” because you do need them to help you.
BARBARA: Right.
TODD: So, I mean, hopefully you can work something like that out where you put that past behind and just move forward, because you can’t erase it, there’s no way it can be fixed, there’s no way for you to make it alright in your heart with what’s happened, but hopefully you’ll start new. The goal is the same; you want her back, you want to know where she’s at and hopefully all the things that you’ve had to blame, maybe you can put them aside. I mean, you’re willing to I think, if you’ll get the help you’ll need now.
BARBARA: Since you’ve said that, I will speak on behalf of my mother but she has a personal message.
TODD: Yeah, I think you had 3 different requests. If you’re ready for that, we’re ready to go.
BARBARA: Yes, I am ready.
TODD: Okay.
BARBARA: This one is for Elizabeth. “Elizabeth, we love you. We are desperately searching for you. I think of you every day. I would love to know where you are. Please come home, I miss you. We know when you weren’t home, we knew you were missing and immediately we have begun to search for you. I will never give up searching for you until I die.” And this is to the person who may have her or was part of the kidnapping, this is for you, “Whoever you are, please let my daughter go. We will not ask any questions. I just want to find and have my daughter back. If my daughter is no longer living in this world, please let me know where her body is so I can put her in a better resting place. I am not asking you, I am begging you, please let my daughter go.” And this is to all the listeners and anybody who may have, possibly have information, “It is almost 20 years since I have last seen Elizabeth, if you know who took her the night of April, or know her whereabouts now, please tell me or the investigator who is handling the case. I am not young anymore and before I leave this world, and as a mother I just want to find my daughter. If you were in my shoes, you would want the same answers. Where is my child? Where can I find her to bring her home? Please, I am begging you; this has been too long of a nightmare felt. Please tell me where Elizabeth is so I can finally have some closure before I leave this world.”
TODD: What about you're Dad, did he have a message or did he let you guys take care of it?
BARBARA: He feels the same.
TODD: So, that’s from the parents then?
BARBARA: Yes, both of them. My mother spoke…it’s actually the words that my mother spoke that day that I wrote it, it is pretty much almost everybody’s feelings. Each of us has our own sayings and stuff like that, it’s just…yes, I won’t lie, we do want justice, but justice it’s… really it’s not very important to us at the moment…Elizabeth is.
TODD: Well, you have to take it one step at a time, obviously. You know anybody that’s done anything wrong needs to be punished for what they’ve done. That’s obvious, that is, but the ultimate goal, the initial goal is to find her first; find her if she’s alive or if she’s dead, because if she’s out there and she’s listening to this and she has been alive and for reason she’s decided not to come home, maybe she’ll hear this and realize what’s happened to you these past years. You’ve never forgotten her, it’s completely consumed your life, and it’s not fair.
BARBARA: Maybe she blames herself for all of this. It’s not her fault.
TODD: But you’ve offered her forgiveness. You’ve offered her to come home and all is forgiven.
BARBARA: Yes.
TODD: So, she shouldn’t be scared at this point, you know if she was thinking about coming home wondering how you guys were going to react and wondering what was going on, we’ve done that tonight. We’ve given her that message.
BARBARA: Right.
TODD: So she knows.
BARBARA: We never have…if she thinks the whole 20 years almost, that we always done it from the beginning to now, we never done it in the first day, the first day we never blamed her. We never said, “Oh gosh, why did she do this or that?” Don’t you ever think that Elizabeth. You know us, we never ever will do that to you and if anybody is saying that, “Yes, they are and that I am lying to you right now,” do not; you know I never lie to you. We made a pact, we never tell anybody a lie, because when you lie, it’s double worse because, the truth, even though it hurts, at least you told the truth and that honesty is always kept but if you tell a lie, that’s so hard to get back the honesty, and you know Mommy always told us never to lie, always to tell the truth even if it’s the wrong mistake because if you tell the truth, the honest and the trust is always but if you lose it, it’s so hard to get it back.
TODD: What are your parents’ names?
BARBARA: My mother is Sam Soon. My father is Tom.
TODD: And they’re probably…are they in their 60s now?
BARBARA: Oh, way over there, just add 10 years to it now.
TODD: Wow, because you’re about my age, you’re just a little bit older than I am and my parents are…my Dad will be 60 this year and it doesn’t seem like they’ve aged at all really over these years because we age along with them, it can creep up on you.
BARBARA: Yeah. If I could compare the aging, facial appearance, I think it really mentally took a toll on my father more than my mother. They’re the same age, I mean, they are maybe a year or so apart but, my father, if you look at his face now from 20 years ago or so until now, it really took a toll on his aging, it looks like he’s a little bit older than he is but he’s not. My mother, because I was able to talk with her, we both were able to run around and search; I know it’s dangerous, I mean, 2 women going out in the unknown from coast to coast searching and the dangers and the possibilities of anything happening to us, we didn’t look at that, we looked upon that we were only after Elizabeth and we need to pass posters and hang flyers and everything to everywhere but it took a lot of toll on my Dad because he couldn’t take off of work, he couldn’t do this with us, but always waited for the phone for us to call to let him know where we were or when we were coming back home. I think it hurt him more because his workplace would not allow him to have any more leave without pay or being fired or being let go or anything, so he had to go to work all the time and it hurt him because he could not be part of the search of every single day. I think he feels guilty, like in some way that he didn’t do his part. He did, he made phone calls; we had $500 - $1,000 phone bills at times calling everywhere from local sheriff’s departments to police departments to even our representative and senator at that time.
TODD: uh huh
BARBARA: It didn’t matter about the money for the phone call, it just mattered that we got some help.
TODD: Now, who is your official law enforcement contact for this case now?
BARBARA: It’s Lieutenant (Daniel) Austin and he can be reached at this number: (254) 547-1357.
TODD: And we’ll add that to your permanent page. You’ll have a permanent archive page at Missing Pieces. All that information will be there for as long as we can make it be there. What’s his feeling? Does he feel like we’re looking for a missing person or an unidentified person in this case? Or has he ever really expressed that?
BARBARA: He has the same initial feeling that he is more looking after a live person; he’s hoping that he can find Elizabeth alive more than anything, but he knows also that there is a possibility, like us, that she could be dead, but he’s hoping and praying that she is alive.
TODD: Well here’s something we can do for you. With Project EDAN, that’s the forensic art project, we also do age progression. Now we can do an age progression of your sister for you…
BARBARA: Yes.
TODD: …for anything, for any purpose, for your flyers, whatever, but I need for you to talk to the detective to make sure that that’s okay with him, you know if this is something that he’s welcoming, that it’s something that’s not going to hurt the case.
BARBARA: Oh yes, actually he will be welcome to anything.
TODD: Okay.
BARBARA: To be honest, I’ve talked to him about the situation years and years now because I always go in and out, and I asked him if it was okay to put his name and his phone number onto this show and he said, “Yes, please do.” He says, “Why ask, you know I would love to do anything.” If they don’t want to talk to me or the family, if they want to talk to him anonymously, yes, he will take it. He will do anything to help us find Elizabeth. If it’s right now, he will do it.
TODD: Well, we’ll definitely work on that then. I think that we’ll probably need more information from you. I’ll have the artist directly email you with more questions. She might need a photograph of your parents.
BARBARA: Oh, I have that ready.
TODD: That’s all ready.
BARBARA: I have from age 20 to right now of each of all my family members.
TODD: So that’s what we need obviously for that and, you know, maybe even something of your image as a sister because you can kind of see the blend of the 2 parents. I know you might not look exactly like your sister but through comparisons, the artist needs to know exactly what to do with trying to create an age progression, and we’ll take her up to her current age and at least you’ll know. Maybe that might be something that can provide a comfort for your family. Who knows?
BARBARA: Oh, I speak for my entire family, thank you. I mean, that really means so much to us.
TODD: Well, we can get started on that right away. That can be something I can take care of beginning the process today. So we’ll work on that.
BARBARA: I really appreciate it.
TODD: That’s going to be a good thing, I think. I hear it’s made you laugh and smile so I really like that, and we’ll add it to this page with any updates that you have, a change in detectives, whatever happens, we can add it to this space, and we’ll put the progression and maybe a little bit about how we do it, we’ll put it on this page, some of the steps we took, you know, to educate people. We’ll work on that.
BARBARA: I wish distance didn’t separate us. I would love to hug you and thank you for that.
TODD: Maybe one day we can. How about that?
BARBARA: Yes. Yeah, I’ll make a plan on that. Honestly, my Mom, always…I know it affects her the most because Elizabeth and I were part of her for 9 months…but we were a part of my Mom, she felt us growing and everything, so I always know that when my Mom goes out in public, and she has to smile, and it’s like…she’s not always laughing and she’s not always smiling, but it’s just so hard to go out in public sometimes is what she says, and even with me a little bit, that you have to smile and act like nothing is wrong, but when inside of you you’re screaming. And I know a lot of times, I felt guilty for doing it, but if you see a friendly face of a stranger and you have in the back of your head, “What did you do to my sister?”
TODD: Oh yeah. That’s so common. You know you see someone and you think, “Could they have been the one that was involved in it? And that’s sad.
BARBARA: And we’ve actually scared a few of the girls about my sister’s age, but from a far distance, if you have a first glance at them so fast, it looked like my sister. We actually chased a few people down trying to make sure if it was her or not. And they were like, “What? What?” and we had to explain to the poor girls that we chased down, “I mean, you just look like my daughter” or “You look like my sister. I’m sorry.” And then we show the flyer and they understand, but I mean if you have a person chasing you down, of course you’re going to be afraid.
TODD: Well, yeah, it’s going to scare you to death basically, but you knew what you were doing and you had a reason for doing it.
BARBARA: Yeah.
TODD: And I’m kind of scared that you could get into a lot of trouble doing that, but you know, how can you not do it?
BARBARA: That’s true.
TODD: How can you not do it? I wish I could bring your sister home. I wish…I hope that this helps. I hope that she’s alive above all and she just comes home.
BARBARA: I hope this interview is the last one I have to do because this interview with you and Missing Pieces, I hope and pray that this will be the one that will be the answer that brings my sister home.
TODD: Well at the very least, I know I can’t, since we can’t make it happen…
BARBARA: It would be nice.
TODD: Yeah, it would be great, but at least we can offer you the photograph and hopefully it will bring comfort, rather than pain, to you family. That we can do; we can do the progression and at least and I know it’s not a shadow of giving you her back but at least we can do that. It’ll help the law enforcement and you’ll have something that you can keep there at home. Maybe it might provide your family comfort. I know, I’m concerned as you are, that your parents are getting older and the possibility of them passing away before they know what happened to her, it’s real and it exists and you just can’t ignore that so maybe if they had something to look at. I don’t know but maybe it will help them.
BARBARA: Yeah. I hope so.
TODD: We can try.
BARBARA: I think it will.
TODD: We can try.
BARBARA: I think my Mom hearing that you are going to do the age progression; I think that will uplift her spirits. We have had a lot of age progression done, and in her view…the first one was so horrifying, I mean, her face was out of proportion. And then the second one, they just…I may be one-eighth of Cherokee blood in me, but they transferred my sister into full-blooded Indian or something, it was not my sister. And it is up on some of the missing person's pages but to be honest, that’s not my sister, she does not look like that and I don’t look like that, none of us does. To be honest, I’ve age slightly, a little bit from 20 years old until now, there’s a slight difference of my face appearance.
TODD: And that’s why I want to see your photograph, as well. You know, we’re going to want to see all that, and the artist that will be doing the sketch, she will hear this episode ahead of time so that’s going to help guide her a little bit too, because not only is this for identification purposes for your sister, I want it to be something that’s going to give you something. There’s no way you could know exactly what your sister would have looked like now, you know, and we have to use science as best as possible to make that be what’s the best average, and they usually don’t look like a portrait, they’re sort of an estimation. I think the hand sketches, which is what you’ll get will be a hand-drawn sketch rather than an electronic sketch, are better. It’s hard to replace a human being doing these sketches, it really is. It’s hard to replace it and I know they’ve got some amazing technology, but the one thing that’s left out is the heart and soul when you’re using a machine.
BARBARA: Well, whoever she is, I think I’ll thank her right now on this radio here. Thank you very much; I and my whole family appreciate it.
TODD: Well, I’ll have that off to her today as a matter of fact, so hopefully we’ll have another show with you at some point in time, where we can talk more about some of the things and some of the progress that you’ve made or, who knows, maybe we’ll have all of you here one day, I hope.
BARBARA: Yes, I hope. Maybe, one day, I’ll be knocking on your door.
TODD: You never know. You never know. Well, we’ll say goodnight to our audience. I think we’ve worn you out. Definitely.
BARBARA: Yeah.
TODD: You’ve never had an interview this long before, have you?
BARBARA: I want to thank everyone for listening to us.
TODD: All right, goodnight everybody.
BARBARA: Goodnight.
Date of Disappearance: April 25, 1988
Date Of Birth: May 31, 1967
Age at Time of Disappearance: 20 years old
Height: 5'2"
Weight: 96 to 106 lbs.
Hair: Chestnut Brown
Eyes: Brown, wears glasses
Race: White and Asian
Distinguishing Characteristics: Scars on forehead, under chin, elbow and right eyebrow. Mole on back between shoulder blades and small birthmark on right buttock.
Clothing: Clothing size "0", white T-shirt with beach scene on front, black "Chic" brand jeans, white "Keds" brand shoes (size 6 to 6 1/2). She was carrying a yellow jacket, 7-11 smock with her name tag, a maroon purse and college books and papers.
Jewelry: Diamond "Romance Whittnauer" watch, 10kt gold ring with three sapphire stones in the center and one diamond on each side.
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