Flashback Friday: Kimberly Carter

This week’s Flashback Friday is for Kimberly Carter, who disappeared from Kansas City, Missouri on July 5, 1984. I’ve seen her middle name given as both “Lawanda” and “LaWanda.” Unless there’s strong evidence to the contrary, I spell such names with a capital letter after the “La” or “Le” or “De” etc.

Anyway, Kimberly, although only nineteen years old, had three kids. The oldest was four; the youngest was only two months. On the day of her disappearance, Kimberly had a friend babysit them all while she went to work. It’s not clear whether she ever arrived at her job, but she did leave a cryptic phone call to a friend — I’m not sure if this whether this was the same friend who was babysitting — saying she was in trouble and asking to be picked up. The line went dead before she could say where she was.

The plot thickens: another friend claims to have heard from Kimberly on July 7, three days after she went missing. Kimberly supposedly said, “One of the men said he would take me home.” But no one did take her home. She’s been missing now for 32 years.

Kimberly had a lot of criminal associates at the time of her disappearance and her family, understandably, believes she met with foul play. Human trafficking comes to mind here, and, although drugs were not specifically mentioned, I wonder if Kimberly might have had some kind of run-in with drug trafficker(s). or suffered an accidental overdose.

(I must emphasize I’m not trying to make Kimberly sound like a bad mother or a bad person, or make it sound like she deserved whatever her fate was. It’s just that SOMETHING happened to her, and whatever it was, it was probably bad.)

I have no idea what happened to Kimberly’s kids, who would all be in their thirties now. I hope they found good people to take care of them. I hope they’ve become happy, productive adults.

And I hope their mother will be found.