In 2007, an official missing-person report was finally filed for Karen Beth Kamsch, a Maryland teenager who was last seen in 1976. Police then searched the well at the Pasadena home where Karen, then age 14, was living with her grandmother. Investigators said that September that they had a “person of interest” in the case and were looking at Karen’s death as a possible homicide.
But nearly four years later, Karen’s case is still an active missing-persons investigation. No one has been arrested in connection with her disappearance.
“No new leads have come in recently,” Justin Mulcahy, an Anne Arundel County police spokesman, said in an email Tuesday.
Karen was last seen in 1976. That winter, upon learning from school officials that Karen had been absent from classes, her grandmother found that “personal belongings, along with her winter coat, were still in her room,” police told the Washington Post in 2007.
But for reasons that have never been made clear, a formal missing-person report was never filed.
That changed in May 2007, when her brother contacted authorities about Karen’s disappearance.
“I just really wanted to know what happened to my sister,” Tate Kamsch said at a 2007 news conference, according to news accounts.
Anne Arundel police said they had established a person of interest in the case. Investigators only described that person as a “close associate or family member” of the girl.
At the time she went missing, Karen might have been suffering from some kind of abuse, police have said. But they have not disclosed what that involved or who is believed to have been abusing her.
Karen would be 49 years old now. At the time she disappeared, she was described as white, 5 feet tall and 110 pounds, according to the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System. She has brown hair and brown eyes.
Anyone with information about her case can call police at 410-222-3588.
