VA KELLY BERGH DOVE: Missing from Harrisonburg, VA - 18 Jun 1982 - Age 20

[Romulus]

Kelly Bergh Dove, 20, Missing since June 18, 1982 from Harrisonburg, VA

Kelly Bergh Dove
Missing since June 18, 1982 from Harrisonburg, Virginia
Classification: Endangered Missing



Vital Statistics

Age at Time of Disappearance: 20 years old
Distinguishing Characteristics: White female. Brown hair.
Dentals: Available

Circumstances of Disappearance

Kelly Bergh Dove worked at the Imperial gas station on South Main Street in Harrisonburg. The married mother of a 4-year-old daughter, Dove had finished high school a year early and was registered to attend Blue Ridge Community College in September.Dove's three sisters all worked at the Imperial station, then the lone building on an isolated stretch of road about a mile south of the James Madison University campus. On Thursday night, June 17, Dove agreed to trade with one of her sisters and work the overnight shift.After midnight on June 18, Dove called Harrisonburg police to report that a man driving a silver Ford had been harassing her. In a second call, she reported the man had come in and had been "dressed improperly." She'd received a threatening phone call, and when she called police a third time, just before 02:30, she sounded panicked. "Please hurry," she said. "He's back." Police arrived at the station just two minutes after Dove's third call, but they found only her purse and a magazine she'd been reading undisturbed on the counter. Dove was gone. Dove was legally declared dead in 1989 after seven years had passed with no sign of life. Her body has never been found, and no one has ever been charged in her disappearance.

Investigators considered several people as potential suspects but could never solve the disappearance.

Investigators

If you have any information concerning this case, please contact:

Harrisonburg Police Department
540-434-4436

Source Information:

The Hook
Rock Town Weekly
The Doe Network: Case File 2413DFVA

LINK:
http://www.doenetwork.org/cases/2413dfva.html

The National Missing and Unidentified Persons System (NamUs)

By bringing people, information, forensic science and technology together, NamUs helps resolve cases.

www.namus.gov

edited by staff to add media link

KELLY BERGH DOVE has been missing from Harrisonburg, VA since 18 Jun 1982 after calling police to report a man was harassing her at work.

During her shift at the Imperial gas station, Dove called the Harrisonburg PD to report a male customer harassing her. Dove called the PD a third time, sounding frightened. Authorities stated they arrived at the gas station two minutes after the...

www.crimewatchers.net

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[SheWhoMustNotBeNamed]

Suspect list narrowed down in 1982 disappearance of Kelly Bergh Dove

"Can you come have someone keep an eye on me?" Police release audio of 911 call from Kelly Bergh Dove in 1982 moments before she was abducted. Now, 40 years later, investigators narrowed down the suspect list to one person.

www.whsv.com

Suspect list narrowed down in 1982 disappearance of Kelly Bergh Dove​

Published: Jun. 23, 2022 at 2:55 PM PDT

Harrisonburg Police Department’s Major Crimes Unit has narrowed down the suspect list from four people to one person in connection to the disappearance of Kelly Bergh Dove.

Dove, 20, vanished while working at the Imperial Gas Station around 2:30 a.m. on June 18, 1982.

“Where is she? Who did this? Why?” said her sister Elaine Bergh in 2022. “Will we ever find her?”

Harrisonburg Police Department investigated Kelly’s disappearance in 1982 and classified it as an abduction.

Police, for the first time, publicly released Kelly’s first of two 911 calls she made early that Thursday morning in 1982.

Kelly’s first call came around 2:27 a.m.

“I’m working the third shift at the Imperial Gas Station. I just had an obscene phone call. This guy came in earlier and he was kind of dressed improperly but I kind of ignored him. I think it was that guy because he just drove through the parking lot for a few seconds before I got the call. Could, you know, have somebody come keep an eye on me?” Kelly said to the 911 dispatcher.

Police said they dispatched an officer to the gas station.

Kelly called 911, again, around 2:29 a.m. While investigators did not release the second 911 tape, they said she described the vehicle the man was driving as a silver Ford.

When police arrived at 2:31 a.m., Kelly had vanished. Her belongings were untouched.



Wetherell is among the detectives at HPD who reopened Kelly’s cold case in 2020. Old evidence has been retested and the Harrisonburg Police Department have been working with Virginia State Police cold case analysts.

With a fresh set of eyes and using modern methods to investigate the case, police have been able to narrow down the suspect list from four people to one person.

Wetherell said early on in the investigation, detectives were able to draw a sketch of a possible suspect based on a witness’s account of a similar person wanted in connection to indecent exposures around the time of Kelly’s disappearance.

The suspect may have known Kelly and drove a vehicle similar to the one she described in her second and final 911 call. Police had worked with the DMV to collect vehicle information.

However, what makes this case more challenging for investigators is the suspect they narrowed down may not be the person in connection to Kelly’s abduction after all.

“You could have an outlier,” said Wetherell. “This could be part of a serial killing from someone who traveled up and down the East Coast in the 80′s. There’s always that possibility. So, for us, we’re combatting not only the local suspects that we have weeded out over the years, but forensics.”


Now, four decades after Kelly’s disappearance, police are racing against time to gather more information.

“We’re working against the clock,” said Wetherell. “This happened 40 years ago and the people we need to talk to are not always still around that’s going to run out before a statute of limitations ever runs out in this case.”

At this time, police only provided a sketch drawing of the suspect and did not provide a name.

 

[Summer_Breeze]

41 years later Kelly Bergh Dove cold case investigation continues to move forward

On June 18, 1982 20-year-old Kelly Bergh Dove vanished while working at the Imperial Gas Station in Harrisonburg around 2:30 a.m. 41 years later her family is still hoping for answers.

www.whsv.com

By Colby Johnson
Published: Jun. 20, 2023 at 6:05 PM EDT|
Updated: 12 hours ago

HARRISONBURG, Va. (WHSV) - On June 18, 1982 20-year-old Kelly Bergh Dove vanished while working at the Imperial Gas Station in Harrisonburg around 2:30 a.m. 41 years later her family is still hoping for answers.

“I have to have hope. I have my days where sometimes the hope is small and if it gets too small I call Brooke (Wetherell) and she talks me through it. I have friends, my family, we all kind of lean on each other. We have to have hope, there’s nothing else you can do but have hope,” said Elaine Bergh, Kelly’s sister.

Harrisonburg Police classified Dove’s disappearance as an abduction back in 1982 and she was declared legally dead in 1989. HPD reopened the investigation into the case in 2020 and over the last few years have narrowed their suspect list down to one person.

“My gut tells me that it’s probably this person and if I could know they were watching now I would say ‘I don’t know how you can live with yourself, come forward’. If anybody even knows anything I don’t see how they can hold in that information day after day,” said Bergh.

<snip>

One factor that may have contributed to the case going unsolved for as long as it has was the way the initial investigation in 1982 was handled.

“When we walked into the gas station there was no police tape, they weren’t even doing fingerprints, customers were still coming in thinking it was open. It was just kind of weird that they didn’t do that,” said Bergh. “I was told by one of the investigators they didn’t take fingerprints because there would have been too many but honestly I don’t care if there had been a million they could’ve gone through every one.”

Harrisonburg Police Sergeant Brooke Wetherell has been investigating the Dove case for three years and with a suspect narrowed down the investigation continues to progress.

“Knowing and feeling confident that you know what happened and being able to prove it are two very different things and so that’s kind of where we’re floating at right now. Within the last year we’re trying to get across the bridge of what we know and what we can prove,” said Sgt. Wetherell.

Wetherell said that the case being cold for as long as it has has made the investigation challenging in a number of ways.


“The biggest challenge for us has been taking the evidence that we have and finding what’s most valuable to this investigation. Having DNA is not as simple as it sounds, anything we have that we can send to the lab might have DNA on it but what if that sample is degraded? The biggest challenge for us has just been identifying and getting clean samples,” she said.

Another challenge is that some of the people who may have had information about the case are no longer alive. Still, Wetherell is confident in the progress of the investigation.

“What we would like to see happen is some additional testing and some interviews and things that will help us bring this case full circle. But anybody who has information, we’re always asking for that, what might be insignificant to someone might be what we’re looking for,” she said.

Wetherell hopes that as the investigation continues HPD will eventually have sufficient evidence to make an arrest.

 

[SheWhoMustNotBeNamed]

Audio of phone calls Kelly made at link.

As a way to highlight the four cold cases in Harrisonburg, the Harrisonburg Police Department created a new tab on their website to bring attention to them called: Gone but not Forgotten. Kelly Dove went missing in 1982 and was presumed dead by 1989; however, her sister Elaine has never given up hope. Breeze TV’s Zoe Mowery spoke with Elaine about how the past 42 years have been without knowing the truth of what happened to her sister.

Gone But Not Forgotten

Cold Cases fall under the responsibility of investigators in the Major Crimes Unit, Criminal Investigations Division at Harrisonburg Police Department. Investigators are responsible for investigating unsolved homicides and crimes involving missing persons in Harrisonburg City.

www.harrisonburgva.gov