Chapter Four: Kathy Kohm:Searching

 

Chapter 4

     Rosemary and Bill Kohms had not slept. They knew it was time to get the kids up and get them off to school.  Should they even send the boys to school?  What was the right thing to do when someone is missing?  Would it look bad to send the boys to school?  Maybe if the boys were at school then they would be occupied and not worry as much about their missing sister.  It might be a good distraction for them.  Maybe the boys could talk to the other kids and see if anyone knew anything. But maybe they should stay home. They could stay together and wait for news.  What is the right thing to do?  There is no instruction book for this.  

    Leo Snyder, Town Marshal, had enlisted the help of the park rangers at the Lincoln Boyhood Home nearby. The town they lived in, Santa Claus, Indiana is and was in a very rural area and there just was not a larger police presence nearby then. They had never needed one.  One of the Park Rangers came and searched the Kohm’s home including Kathy’s room for any clue as to where she might be.  Rosemary and Bill were glad to have anyone looking, anyone helping. 

    Town Marshall Snyder realized early on that he should call the State Police.  After not finding anything in the first 24 hours he did just that.  Lt George Lewallen took over the case and Snyder brought him up to speed.  They continued to work together on the case, organizing search efforts and questioning witnesses. They prepared a survey that first week was sent to every home in Christmas Lake Village that asked residents to confirm their whereabouts on April 5th. They also asked residents if they had seen Kathy or anything unusual that day.  

    In those first two weeks the whole neighborhood was out looking. Kathy’s Dad,Bill Kohm, was an Ironworker, part of the construction of a new power plant at Rockport, Indiana. Members of Bill’s Union volunteered to search.  Boy Scout troops and high schoolers also pitched in. The wooded areas inside Christmas Lake Village were being combed thoroughly. People were knocking on doors, looking in sheds, treehouses and outbuildings. Of course they also searched outside the gated community all around the town of Santa Claus as well.  

    Old abandoned farmhouses and barns were searched. They looked in wells.  They looked anywhere they thought an 11 year old could possibly be.  Announcements went out on the radio.  Everyone was looking for Kathy.  

     They needed a picture for the searchers and the t.v. news to use.  Rosemary had given them her most recent school picture.  In it Kathy was wearing an ivory colored turtleneck sweater and a brown corduroy blazer.  A little gold necklace with a pendant dangles from the collar of the turtleneck sweater.  Kathy’s light brown hair is cut in a short style that was very popular in 1981.  She looks bright and happy in the photo.  She looks like so many other young girls in Indiana in 1981.  The picture would be on the news, in newspapers and on fliers tacked up all over Southern Indiana.  The public would all see that photo so often that Kathy’s face would become as familiar to us as those of our own families.  She would seem like someone we knew; someone we had met. But we would never meet her.  No one would ever meet her again.

     Soon dogs were brought in to try to track the scent and they caught a trail for a little while but ultimately they had no success.  Someone volunteered a helicopter and spent a day flying over the whole area looking for Kathy.  Surely they would see something.  The trees were pretty bare still and there were no tall crops in the fields.  But they saw nothing.  Everything that everyone thought to try and everywhere that they thought to look produced no success. Minutes turned into hours and hours turned into days. But there was still no sign of Kathy.

    They came to the conclusion early on that all three lakes in Christmas Lake Village would have to be dragged in case she had somehow ended up in the water.    

   Occasionally in that resort town there would be a drowning in the warmer weather with all the vacationers here and at the campground down the road, Lake Rudolf. Searchers were experienced with the grisly task dragging lakes for bodies. Boats went back and forth dragging their hooked nets but they found nothing.