On 5 August 1989, Tracy Kroh, a 17-year-old honor student at Halifax Area High School, left her home at Enterline, Dauphin County, Pennsylvania, to deliver some items to her sister who lived north of Halifax, Dauphin County. She was never seen again. Her locked car was found in the town square at Millersburg, several miles north of her sister’s home.
This post is part of a series chronicling the efforts to find out what happened to her. To date, although nothing conclusive has been determined, she was most likely the victim of foul play. The case of her disappearance remains unsolved to this day.
This story is told through news articles appearing in regional newspapers available from Newspapers.com.
For all other blog posts on Tracy Kroh, see: Disappearance of Tracy Kroh at Millersburg, 1989.
The articles presented here from May 1994 tell of a sighting in Texas of three girls who disappeared under similar circumstances, one of whom was said to be Tracy Kroh.
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From the Pottsville Republican, 7 May 1994:
Tracy Kroh may have been seen in Texas
Tracy Kroh, the Upper Dauphin woman who disappeared in 1889, may have been spotted in Texas, according to her sister Kimberly.
The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children in Arlington, Virginia, received an anonymous call about a month ago from a man who said he had seen Tracy and two other missing women, her sister said. The call came from the Austin area.
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From The Times Leader, Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, 7 May 1994:
Tip revives hunt for woman missing for more than 5 years
Tiffany Sessions, who disappeared in Gainesville five years ago, was seen on April 9 in a motel on the north side of Austin, police were told
FORT LAUDERDALE, Florida [Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel] – An anonymous tipster says Tiffany Sessions and two other young women, all missing for more than five years, are captive prostitutes who were seen a month ago in Austin, Texas.
Far fetched Claim? More than likely, investigators in Florida, Colorado, Pennsylvania and Texas said on Friday.
Nevertheless, the tip, from a caller in Houston to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children in Arlington, Virginia, has created a frenzy of fresh media attention over the three disappearances.
Sessions, who disappeared in Gainesville five years ago, was seen on April 9 in a motel on the north side of Austin, police were told.
With her were the other two women, Beth Ann Miller of Idaho Springs, Colorado, missing since 1982, and Tracy Kroh of Millersburg, Pennsylvania, missing since 1989, who were also being held against their will by a man named Thomas Stewart, the caller said.
The tipster said the group was traveling in a white van with a Florida tag and a blue-gray van with an unknown tag.
The claim, sent by the Pennsylvania State Police to law enforcement agencies all over the country by computer on April 10, was not supposed to be made public.
The agencies involved have been investigating the tip for more than three weeks.
“We have not been able to verify anything this caller has said. But by the same token, we haven’t been able to discount it either,” said Lt. Emery Galney, spokesman for the Alachua County Sheriff’s Office in Gainsville, which has been investigating the Sessions case since her disappearance.
“Our position is to err on the side of caution. We’re going to run down anything.”
Harold Foster, agent-in-charge of the Colorado Bureau of Investigation, which has been tracking the disappearance of Miller, said the tip is difficult to believe.
“The consensus is that the person was not being entirely truthful,” Foster said. “When you consider the scope and volume of the flyers sent out on these cases, one with the propensity for such an act could pick up that information very easily.”
Still, some aspects of the tip piqued the investigators’ interest.
Details of the three cases are somewhat similar. And how did the caller know about the three disappearances so widely scattered across the country over so many years?
Tiffany Sessions was a 20-year-old junior at the University of Florida when she disappeared after going for an exercise walk on the evening of 9 February 1989.
Her disappearance sparked one of the largest searches in Florida history, rivaling only that of the search for Adam Walsh, the 8-year-old boy who was snatched from a Hollywood department store in 1981 and later found murdered.
Patrick Sessions, Tiffany’s father, said., “I’ve got 500 of these leads sitting in my desk. I don’t go ballistic one way or another on these things. If somebody made this up, they went to a lot of trouble.
“It sure makes me wonder, but we’ve had hoaxes and extortionists before. Someone who is a Fruit Loop and follows missing persons cases could have made it up.” But, he added, “This one really interests me because of the specific nature of it. I think this is worth following up. My position has always been this is an ongoing case.”
This past February marked the fifth anniversary of Tiffany’s disappearance. At the time, her parents did not hold out much hope of her being found alive.
Last month, Hillary Sessions asked a judge in Tampa to declare Tiffany legally dead in order to collect on a $50,000 life insurance policy.
“It doesn’t mean I’m giving up looking for Tiffany,” she said, adding that the money would be used to continue the search and to fund missing children’s clearinghouses.
Patrick Sessions was against the declaration. He said that if she were declared dead, it would hinder the search.
Beth Miller disappeared on 16 August 1983, as she jogged in Idaho Falls, a town of 2,200 about 35 miles west of Denver.
“She was a typical teenager who was well-liked in the community,” said Police Chief Stu Nay. “We get about five reports like this a year. We have to take them seriously.”
But Beth’s mother, Ilene Miller-Taylor, filed a petition in Clear Creek County Court on Friday to have her daughter declared dead.
“It’s not a happy occasion, but it’s something that just has to be done,” she told Carol Wilcox, a reporter for the Clear Creek Courant.
However, in light of the tip, District Judge William L. Jones postponed a decision on the girl’s death until July 21.
“I think he’s right. I’m glad he gave a 60-day leeway,” Miller-Taylor told Wilcox.
The tip also has torn the emotions of Ellen Kroh, mother of Tracy Kroh.
Tracy Kroh vanished in August 1989 at age 17. Kroh was a straight-A student and ranked third in her class entering senior year, her mother said. She didn’t smoke or drink.
“Sure, I want her to be alive. I want this solved one way or the other, good news or bad,” said Kroh of Enterline, Pennsylvania.
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Corrections and additional information should be added as comments to this post.