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Va. Beach disappearance cold case

 
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rd



Joined: 13 Sep 2002
Posts: 9273
Location: Jacksonville, FL

PostPosted: Tue Aug 31, 2004 8:18 am    Post subject: Va. Beach disappearance cold case Reply with quote

from home.hamptonroads.com (fair use)

Teen’s death still haunts cold-case files of Va. Beach

By KERRY DOUGHERTY, The Virginian-Pilot
© August 31, 2004

Thought I’d forget?

Not a chance.

Nope, the unsolved killing of a Connecticut teenager – the one I write about nearly every August – is 26 years old.

The case continues to fester.

Walking among us are the killers – and their accomplices – who know exactly what went down that awful August night.

How do these creeps sleep?

Each time I write a Let’s-Not-Forget-The-Girl-Who-Was-Killed -In-Virginia Beach column, it provokes a smattering of responses. Friends of the suspects tell me to give up. So do relatives of the suspects. Once, one of the suspects himself phoned – long distance – to tell me to leave it alone.

Nice try. But the Monaco mystery won’t go away.

Here’s a primer on the case. Forgive me if you’ve heard it all before:

On August 20, 1978, 18-year-old Barbara Jean Monaco drove to the beach from Derby, Conn., with her older sister, Joanne. The girls registered at the old Aloha Motel on 15th Street. They planned to stay for a week.

They did then what girls still do when they come to the beach in the summer. They sunbathed by day, partied by night.

In the wee hours of Aug. 23, Barbara Jean left her sister and set out on foot for Peabody’s, where she had a date with a bartender.

Somewhere along Pacific Avenue, she vanished.

Witnesses told police they saw her get into a car.

What happened to the cute former high school majorette after that is a matter of conjecture. One thing seems certain: By dawn on Aug. 23, Barbara Jean was dead.

The spring after her disappearance, an informant came forward, seeking a reward. He told of local guys who drove Barbara Jean to a cottage near Oceana where they raped and strangled her. They dumped her body in the water, he said.

The informant reportedly passed a police polygraph test, but prosecutors declined to offer him immunity in return for his testimony because they thought he was intimately entwined in the killing.

Big mistake, as it turns out.

Although officials repeatedly assured the Monaco family in 1979 that they were close to making an arrest, they never did.

Imagine, then, how it must rankle this long-suffering family to see the national hysteria surrounding the disappearances of Chandra Levy, Elizabeth Smart and Laci Peterson, while Barbara Jean’s case drags on and on. And no one seems to care.

A couple of years ago, the Monaco family got a glimmer of hope. Virginia Beach cold-case homicide officers began investigating the case again. They contacted the now middle-aged witnesses and suspects, hoping for something new, something that had been overlooked the first time.

Most of the men lawyered up and shut up. One who did talk to police killed himself.

And in Connecticut, a family continued to mourn. Last summer, the Monaco family announced that they’d had enough. Twenty-five years to the day after she vanished, they held a funeral Mass for Barbara Jean in her hometown.

After a quarter-century of fruitlessly praying for justice, the weary Monacos said they were settling for “closure.”

There may be closure for Barbara Jean’s family. But there is no statute of limitations for her killers.

Chances are, some people reading this newspaper know exactly what happened in Virginia Beach 26 years ago.

They’ll never forget. Neither will we.

Reach Kerry at 446-2306 or at kerry.dougherty@cox.net.
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rd



Joined: 13 Sep 2002
Posts: 9273
Location: Jacksonville, FL

PostPosted: Tue Aug 31, 2004 8:45 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Hi Kerry,

I saw your article on Barbara Jean Monoco's disappearance and posted it to my web site www.justiceforchandra.com along with this email. It is exactly that feeling that Chandra Levy's case would become a cold case despite the usual assurances for any number of years that the case is "under investigation" without hearing of anyone who was asked a question in the so called investigation that prompted me to write Murder on a Horse Trail: The Disappearance of Chandra Levy.

I was determined that if police wouldn't pursue answers to the many puzzling questions surrounding Chandra's disappearance, then I would make sure the public was aware of those questions and the context in which they arise. I was hampered by publishers not wanting to publish books about open cases and their multi-year process of getting a book published and into bookstores, so I also had to publish the book as well as write it to get it out there this year.

The effort was worth it. After months of trying to get the book into the hands of investigators and district attorneys who can make a difference, some awareness that Chandra's case has questions that were not being investigated has been raised among readers, maybe with some in law enforcement as well, who knows?

There was some recent heartening news of old leads being revisited in Chandra's case, and like with your columns, that's all we're trying to do.

regards,
Ralph Daugherty
author, Murder on a Horse Trail: The Disappearance of Chandra Levy

click to read the online true crime mystery novel Murder on a Horse Trail: The Disappearance of Chandra Levy

www.justiceforchandra.com home page
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