Kristen Modafferi

Reward: $50,000.00
Missing since
June 23, 1997
5'8" tall, 140 lbs.
Dark Brown Hair
Dark Brown Eyes
Distinctive Dimples
Student from
North Carolina
State University,
Born 6/1/79.
Last seen leaving
Spinelli's Coffee Shop
in San Francisco
California, USA

www.modlink.com/kristen/home.htm

Kristen Modafferi
Kristen was born June 1, 1979. She has dark brown hair, dark brown eyes, and is known for her distinctive dimples. She is 5'8" tall, and weighs approximately 140 pounds.
Kristen sang alto with a Cappology 101 alongside her sister Allison. Not only was Kristen bright, cheerful, and compassionate, but she was also a very talented singer. All of us in a Cappology miss Kristen deeply and we keep her in our prayers.
Kristen had just completed her freshman year under a full scholarship as a full time student in the School of Design at North Carolina State University. Over the summer she had planned to attend a photography course at the University of California at Berkeley. She disappeared on June 23rd, the day before that course started.
Here is a letter written by Kristen's parents explaining the details about Kristen's disappearance.
There is now a $10,000 reward for information leading to Kristen's safe return - if you have any information about her whereabouts, please contact Officer Mahanay at (510) 238-3641 or e-mail to Desvernine Associates at domino@sirius.com or modafferi@geocities.com
Please spread word about this page wherever possible in hopes that someone somewhere will recognize her and know where she is.
We miss you, Kristen, and we are praying for your safe return.
The Modafferi Search Fund has also been established to assist the Modafferi family in their efforts to bring Kristin home. Watch this webpage for announcements of concerts which will benefit the Modafferi family.
Here's a link to the most complete page of Kristen info and links.
www.acappology.com/missing.htm

Thank you for visiting the Kristen Modafferi Foundation website. Through the sharing of information and resources, the Kristen Modafferi Foundation hopes to help reunite families with their missing loved ones. Please spend as much time as you like reading our stories, sharing information, and helping out others united in their cause to locate people dear to all our hearts.
The Kristen Modafferi Foundation is currently fundraising to aid missing person searches by selling "For the Love of a Child; A Community's Cookbook," a collection of 550 recipes from individuals sympathetic to the suffering and supportive of the hope. Click here for more information on purchasing the cookbook.
The Kristen Modafferi Foundation was started in 1999 by Joan Petruski, a friend of the Modafferi family, who is dedicated to the safe return of missing and abducted adults everywhere. Thanks to her exhaustive efforts, the Foundation has raised over $70,000.00. Please take a moment of time to help out the Foundation in any way possible.
The Foundation is having a "Knight Out" fundraiser on August 5th. Click here for more.
"For the Love of a Child; A Community's Cookbook" - Read more about our fundraising efforts.
Click here for information on "Kristen's Act" - passed into law in 2000.


www.cdswebs.com/kristen/

www.findkristen.com/Prologue.html
Prologue
HomeOpen LetterPledgeAll ChaptersQuick FactsModlinkContactWhy Kristen Modafferi Matters.


Paul McCartney of the Beatles once told a story about the song he and Lennon wrote called, 'A Day in the Life'. There is a line in that song that goes, "I'd love to turn you on."

McCartney went on to explain that for years that phrase was circling around his mind and that he was just waiting for the right song to come along for this line to find a home.

Along came January, 1967 and 'A Day in the Life", McCartney found a home for this 'lyric in his head', and again, music history was made.

Simarlarly, the phrase, "Why Kristen Matters", has been in my head for years and now I have found a location for this phrase that deserves to have a home.

This website is that home.

Most of you know the Kristen Modafferi story from reading the newspaper or watching the evening news. There is so much more to the story and this website will attempt to tell you that story.

Besides the Oakland Police and the Modafferi's themselves, there is no one more familiar with the day to day search for Kristen than myself. I have been to Texas, Arizona, Colorado, North Carolina and even Granada, Nicaragua checking leads out looking for answers on what happened to Kristen. I have also spent probably a couple hundred hours on the phone with Kristen's parents and I have this perspective to offer.

I have an incredible story to share and by the time you get through all the chapters, you will know what it feels like to sit at Bob and Debbie's kitchen table. You will look past their eyes and into the hearts' of beautiful parents hurting for their precious child.

When you are done, you will know 'Why Kristen Modafferi Matters' on a level you never thought imaginable.

Kristen has changed my life and I suspect her story will profoundly inspire yours.

To the following people, I wish to say "thank you." If it weren't for you, I would not be doing what I need to be doing with my life. Because of the savages involved in Kristin Smart's tragedy, I will only mention first names: Kristen, Kathy and Betsy, Kathy Mac, Larry, Charlie and Lou, Bob, Debbie, Allison, Lauren and Meghan, Courtney, Bev and Jim, Mike and Joan, Sheila and Ray, Greg, Dee and Julie, Matt, John, Jimmy, Theodore Eduardo and Leon, Timothy, Tracy, Susan and Karen, Hancock, John and Faye, Blair, Dorothy, Bill, Dianne and Cynthia, Pete, Kimberly, Alicia and Peyton.

Most importantly, my beautiful, beautiful family. Especially my dear, dear mom and dad


Sincerely,

Dennis Mahon
The Virtual World Cafe
May 17th, 2002 3:32am
San Luis Obispo, Ca 93401


www.findkristen.com/QuickFacts.html
1. Oakland Police have classified Kristen's case as an "at risk/endangrered abduction".

2. Kristen was just 3 weeks past her 18th birthday, (June 1st, 1997) when she vanished.

3. Kristen's last contact was a message on her parent's answering machine. She had called to wish her dad, "Happy Father's Day."

4. Kristen was seen on the 2nd floor of the Crocker Galleria Mall where she worked, about 3:45pm. Her shift ended at 3:00pm and she was walking shoulder to shoulder in a practicaly empty mall, with a young blonde-haired woman. This 'blond-haired' woman has never come forward.

5. The ABC-TV affiliate in San Francisco received an anonymous phone call shortly after Kristen vanished. The male caller said that Kristen was killed by two women.and that one of the women was a supervisor at the downtown YMCA. The caller said that Kristen could be found near a wooden bridge in Pt. Reyes, Ca. The police later identified the caller as Jon Onuma, 38, from San Francisco. The evidence linking him to Kristen is, unfortunately, circumstantial.

6. The police feel that at the very least, he knows more about Kristien's disappearance than he has been willing to admit under questioning. The women at the YWCA are totally innocent.
Quick Facts
HomeOpen LetterPledgeAll ChaptersQuick FactsModlinkContact



www.angelfire.com/ar/elayson/kristen.html
WHAT HAPPENED TO KRISTEN MODAFFERI?

Name: Kristen Modafferi
Current Age: 20 Age at Disappearance: 18
D.O.B.: June 1, 1979
Date of Disappearance: June 23, 1997 From: San Francisco, CALIFORNIA
Height: 5'8" Weight: 140 lbs. Hair: Dark Brown Eyes: Dark Brown
Distinctive Facial Features: Dimples on both cheeks
DETAILS: Kristen was new to the Oakland/San Francisco, California area when she vanished after having left work. Kristen left behind a $400 paycheck from her place of employment and had already paid for summer session classes at UC Berkeley which were to begin the next day, eliminating the probability of a planned disappearance. Before leaving her place of employment that day, she had mentioned to co-workers that she was interested in visiting a beach in the Land's End area of the city. Search dogs were able to confirm that Kristen was at that beach some time that day. Investigators have two theories regarding her disappearance: 1) that Kristen may have been abducted by persons unknown and is being held against her will or 2) Kristen suffered some sort of injury that would have left her disoriented about her surroundings and unable to recognize where she was or remember who she was, causing her to wander away. Kristen has been missing for 2 years as of June 23, 1999. She is considered to be at risk.
Contact Information: Officer Mahanay (520) 238-3641 The Modafferi Family: (704) 845-2116 Email: bobmod@aol.com If you spot Kristen in immediate danger, please call 911or your local law enforcement agency
Click Here To Go The SiteConstructors' Kristen Modafferi Page
This page last updated June 16, 1999

Jon Onuma prime suspect
Chapter 8: The Anonymous Phone Call
HomeOpen LetterPledgeAll ChaptersQuick FactsModlinkContactA few days after Kristen was reported missing, and in the midst of the media frenzy that surrounded her disappearance, the local ABC-TV affiliate (KGO) received an anonymous phone call.

The caller was male. He said that Kristen had been riding in the back seat of a car with two women, and she had gotten into a heated argument with them.

The argument got increasingly violent, and Kristen was killed by these two women in the vicinity of Market and Castro Street. The caller added that the women proceeded to drive north over the Golden Gate Bridge about an hours drive to Pt. Reyes, where they placed Kristen's body under a wooden bridge. Finally, the caller said that one of the women was a supervisor at the main YMCA branch located on the Embarcadero.

The caller then hung up.

Officer Mahanay of the Oakland Police went to the YMCA and was able to locate the two women implicated by the caller. After questioning, however, it was determined that these two women were completely innocent and had nothing to do with Kristen's disappearance.

Mahanay asked the women, "Who on earth would want to set you up like this?"
The women told Mahanay that a man named Jon Onuma had been trying to get them in trouble, so they felt that he should be questioned. The police determined that Onuma was Asian, 38 years old, 5'3" tall, and 130lbs, with long hair
down his back. They also uncovered his violent track record of abusing women both emotionally and physically.

So they find Onuma and he at first denies making the phone call to KGO. But after further questioning, Onuma admits that he was the caller.

"Yeah, it was me," he admits, but I just made the story up. I don't like those gals at the YMCA and wanted to cause them some trouble."

He denies having ever met Kristen and swears he had nothing to do with her other than making that phone call.

Personally, I couldn't believe that people would actually do stuff like that but Mahanay once told me that it happens more than he cares to admit. "Some people are filled with so much hate that this is nothing to them", Mahanay told me.

Although Jon Onuma's decision to make his phone call was stupid and reprehensible, he did not break any law by doing so, and after questioning he was released.

When I first arrived in San Francisco, one of the first things I did was request a meeting to meet Officer Mahanay and let him get a chance to know me first hand.

The meeting was scheduled for the following Monday, and I drove over to Oakland to meet the person in charge of the investigation into the disappearance of Bob and Debbie's beautiful young daughter.
Jon Onuma
Jon Onuma
Pt. Reyes is one hour's drive north over the Golden Gate Bridge.

www.findkristen.com/8Anonymous.html

Parents in five-year search for daughter
By Josh Richman
Staff Writer
OAKLAND -- Sipping cappuccinos in Jack London Square after a television appearance Tuesday morning, Bob and Debbie Modafferi speak in a rush of words, often interrupting each other to make a point, add a detail.
After five years of pushing the police and press to maintain the search for their missing daughter, Kristen, they could have slipped into a smooth spiel. But their mission -- their pain -- seems as fresh now as if it had begun just yesterday.
"We won't let the Bay Area forget Kristen Modafferi," Debbie Modafferi said. "We just know that somebody here knows something."
Kristen, a North Carolina State University freshman, was living on Jayne Avenue in Oakland with plans to take a summer photography course at the University of California, Berkeley when she vanished without a trace June 23, 1997, 22 days after her 18th birthday. She was last seen leaving her job at Spinelli's Coffee in San Francisco's Crocker Galleria with an unknown blond woman wearing a backpack.
The Modafferis visited the Bay Area this week and met Monday with Officer Patrick Mahanay, who has been on the case all along. The police recently assigned two more officers to assist Mahanay -- two new sets of eyes to examine the facts and offer fresh perspectives.
There is a $50,000 reward, but little new information coming in.
Someone here knows what happened, Debbie Modaferri said, and that's the only person able "to give our family some peace and closure. Kristen has three sisters; they're doing well but we all miss Kristen terribly."
The Modafferis have turned their grief to other people's advantage.
They have crusaded for passage of Kristen's Law, a federal law providing for the creation of an information clearinghouse for missing adults -- much like the one the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children maintains for kids.
They pushed for a $1.75 million budget appropriation, secured within the last few months, to help the Arizona-based Center for Missing Adults build that database.
A family friend, Joan Petrusky, launched the Friends of Kristen Missing Persons Foundation and now helps eight to 10 other families with aid such as billboards, fliers, travel expenses, private investigators, "anything the family needs in their searches for their missing young adults," Debbie Modafferi said.
The Modafferis, who live in Charlotte, N.C., thank all the people -- many from the Bay Area -- who have signed the guestbook on their Web site or otherwise conveyed their thoughts.
"Because of their support and prayers, that's what kept our family strong and helps us continue our search for Kristen," Debbie Modafferi said.
The couple said they are often asked how they manage to keep working so hard for Kristen while also continuing their own lives as parents to their other three daughters. For them, there's no choice.
"Kristen will never be forgotten or out of our thoughts ... but you go on as a family," Bob Modafferi said.
"When people say, 'How do you do it?' that's what we tell them: You have to."
For more information on Kristen Modafferi, go to www.modlink.com/kristen/home.htm or www.findkristen.com Anyone with information about her disappearance should call Oakland Police Officer Patrick Mahanay at (510) 238-3641.

www.oaklandtribune.com/Stories/
0,1413,82%257E1726%257E710610,00.html

Other groups look at Durst in unsolved cases
By Scott E. Williams
The Daily News

Published August 24, 2003

GALVESTON Regardless of the outcome of Robert Dursts Galveston murder trial, the millionaire New Yorker will have to deal with law enforcement agencies.
Durst still faces two felony charges of bond jumping for his failure to appear at an October 2001 arraignment days after his arrest. He was nabbed seven weeks later in Philadelphia.
Police in New York still want to talk to Durst about the 1982 disappearance of his wife, Kathleen, and Durst is someone police are investigating in three cases in California. He has been charged in none of the cases. Last year, State District Court Judge Susan Criss ordered Durst to submit a handwriting sample to police investigators.
The Los Angeles case involves the death of Susan Berman, a crime author who was found shot in the back of the head in her home, on Christmas Eve 2000.
The shooting occurred days before she was to talk to New York investigators about the 1982 disappearance of Kathleen Durst, wife of Robert Durst.
Kathleen Durst has not been seen since, and Berman spoke publicly about Robert Dursts concern for Kathleen and his hopes she was still alive in the weeks following her disappearance.
More recently, police in San Francisco and Eureka, Calif., began to consider Durst part of their investigations into a pair of disappearances.
Eureka Police detective Dave Parris said Durst was one of many people being investigated in the November 1997 disappearance of 16-year-old Karen Mitchell.
Mitchell was last seen walking out of Eurekas Bayshore Mall. Hes an investigative lead, Parris said. Its a name among hundreds that we have. To say hes a suspect would be inappropriate, but were definitely doing some background work on him.
John Bradley, an investigator with the San Francisco District Attorneys Office, also said he would like to ask Durst some questions about the disappearance of Oakland teen Kristen Modafferi.
Modafferi was last seen leaving a coffee shop in San Francisco on June 23, 1997, a little more than three weeks after her 18th birthday.
Police were able to get a composite sketch based on a witness description. The description was of a man with gray hair, slightly crooked nose and glasses that were similar to ones Robert Durst has worn publicly.
Who does that sketch remind you of, Bradley asked. The only thing that didnt match was that he doesnt have blue eyes. He often alters his appearance, obviously.
Bradley said officials there became aware of Durst after Matt Birkbeck interviewed Bradley for an article on Modafferis disappearance.
Birkbeck is author of A Deadly Secret, which chronicles New York investigators attempts to solve the disappearance of Kathleen Durst and also covers the early stages of the Galveston murder case against Durst.
I was doing a story on the missing girl, and wasnt even thinking of Durst, Birkbeck said. I was talking to the Oakland police, and the interview was over. Just talking, they mentioned the suspect they were looking at in San Francisco, and said something about him possible getting large amounts of money wired in from the East Coast, and possibly being involved with cross-dressing. I just thought of Durst.
Detectives began looking, and found Durst as many as nine residences in Northern California during the late 1990s. Birkbeck starts to just casually mention Durst, Bradley said. Quite by happenstance, another investigator in Oakland overhearing bits and pieces of this went to a national Web site for missing children, starts fooling around and finds Karens case, he said. Thats literally what a dumb-luck discovery it was. We dug further and then found out Bob Durst had property in Eureka and then here in San Fran, too. I can prove that he was in and out of San Francisco on a regular basis from 1995 to 2001.


2003 Galveston County Daily News. All rights reserved.

DURST EYED IN MISSING TEENS' CASES
By LESLIE T. SNADOWSKY


ROBERT DURST
New suspicions.

October 7, 2003 -- GALVESTON, Texas - As if Robert Durst didn't have enough problems, the cross-dressing millionaire murder defendant is under suspicion in the disappearances of two teenage girls in California.
John Bradley, an investigator for the San Francisco DA, said there are links between the 1997 disappearances of Kristen Modafferi, 18, in San Francisco and Karen Mitchell, 16, in Eureka, 300 miles north.
"Durst's activities need to be examined everywhere. [He] is a mystery whose layers need to be peeled away like an onion," said Bradley.
Bradley said Modafferi "walked off the planet" between 3 and 3:45 p.m. June 23, 1997, in the City by the Bay, where Durst lived at the time.
He said a composite photo of the likely abductor of Mitchell in Eureka looks just like Durst, who had a home in nearby Trinidad.
Mitchell was last seen Nov. 25, 1997, talking to a stranger.
But Eureka Detective Dave Parris said: "Durst is not a suspect [in Mitchell's disappearance]. He's just an investigative lead, among 1,000 others."

Durst is on trial in Galveston on charges of murdering and dismembering his next-door neighbor, Morris Black.
Additional reporting by Andy Geller


www.nypost.com/news/nationalnews/7487.htm

NEW YORK POST is a registered trademark of NYP Holdings, Inc. NYPOST.COM, NYPOSTONLINE.COM, and NEWYORKPOST.COM
are trademarks of NYP Holdings, Inc. Copyright 2003 NYP Holdings, Inc. All rights reserved.

TERRIFIED BRO FEARED KILLER VISIT FROM DURST
By ANDREA PEYSER


September 28, 2003 --
SOMETIMES, no lock on the door is secure enough.
As word spread in 2001 that alleged cuckoo killer Robert Durst had jumped bail, running from a murder charge, his youngest brother went into a panic, fearing he might be killed.
Thomas Durst is a real-estate developer in the tony Marin County, Calif., town of Ross. In late 2001, he walked into his local police station to seek protection from his gun-loving, wig-wearing, fugitive brother, should Robert decide to pay him a visit, two California law-enforcement sources close to the case told me.
"He said, 'My brother's on the run, I'm afraid for my life,' - or words to that effect," one source said.
Thomas begged the cops to assign extra patrol cars to watch over his house. He did not obtain an order of protection.

He made his fearful plea to the police shortly after his cross-dressing brother - charged with one murder, a suspect in two others, and under suspicion for more - went on the lam to escape a murder charge in Galveston, Texas, where Robert allegedly killed and chopped up elderly Morris Black two years ago today.
Robert Durst's joy ride ended on Nov. 30, 2001, when he was picked up for shoplifting in Pennsylvania. His trial for Black's murder began in Galveston last week.
Reached in California, Thomas told me: "I am under a gag order because I'm on the witness list.
"I can't talk to you - but I wish you well."
It's not hard to understand why Thomas lived in terror of his brother.
As I reported exclusively on Friday, authorities now believe that Robert Durst planned to use his time on the lam to take care of unfinished business. They think he plotted to do away with his other brother, Douglas, who runs the Durst family's multibillion-dollar Manhattan real-estate empire. The two have been estranged since Robert was passed over for the top job in the family business 20 years ago.
Lawmen concluded that Robert planned to do Douglas harm after listening to tape-recorded jailhouse telephone conversations between Robert and his wife, Debrah Lee Charatan, made while Robert was locked up in a Pennsylvania jail between December 2001 and January 2002.
One tape reveals that Robert had driven to Douglas' house in Katonah, N.Y., armed and dangerous. But he left the driveway without incident, later telling his wife, "I screwed it up."
Also, in his car were directions to the Connecticut home of another nemesis, Gilberte Najamy, who's trying to prove that Robert killed his first wife, Kathie, who disappeared in 1982.
The tapes suggest Robert suspected that Thomas was afraid of him. In one jailhouse chat with his sister, Wendy Kreeger, Robert asked, seemingly innocently, why Thomas hadn't visited him behind bars.
Thomas' fear was not based on paranoia alone.
While Robert Durst remains a suspect in the disappearance of his first wife, he is also suspected in the 2000 murder of his old friend, Susan Berman, in Los Angeles. Cops believe Robert wanted to shut up Berman because she was about to nail him for Kathie's murder.
Investigators are just now learning the full extent of Robert Durst's bizarre lifestyle of the last 20 years. He combed the country, from homeless shelters to luxury hotels, like some kind of wealthy vagrant, assuming the identities of a dozen or more people, male and female.
This year, Durst also came under suspicion for the disappearances of two young California women.
One is Karen Marie Mitchell, who was 16 when she vanished from Eureka, Calif., in 1997. A composite drawing of the last person seen with Karen shows a gray-haired older man with big glasses.
Cops also are looking at any links to the disappearance of college student Kristen Modafferi, 19, who was last seen in a San Francisco coffee shop in 1997.

www.nypost.com/commentary/3360.htm

NEW YORK POST is a registered trademark of NYP Holdings, Inc. NYPOST.COM, NYPOSTONLINE.COM, and NEWYORKPOST.COM
are trademarks of NYP Holdings, Inc. Copyright 2003 NYP Holdings, Inc. All rights reserved.