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 article presented here from August 1998 reports that after 9 years, the trail has gone cold.
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From the Pottsville Republican, 26 August 1998:
Tracy Kroh gone 9 long years
Memories of Upper Dauphin teen vivid, but trail grows cold
BY JONI R. EDMONDSON, Staff Writer
Besides her family, at least one other person thinks about Tracy M. Kroh everyday.
Cpl. Robert G. Mull, of the Lykens state police, has his office lined with photos of Kroh at 17 – the last pictures taken before she disappeared nine years ago.
“I have her on my wall looking at me,” Mull said. “I get reminded of it every day, every time I come to work.”
Kroh, of Enterline, Dauphin County – about 10 miles southwest of Lykens – has been missing since 5 August 1989, when she left her parents’ home to visit her sister, Tammy L. Hoffman, near Millersburg.
Hoffman and her husband weren’t home when Kroh stopped by and dropped off a barbecue and grocery store coupons, which were on their front steps when they returned at 6:30 p.m.
The teen’s father, Ivan Kroh, found her car parked and locked in Millersburg’s central square later that evening.
She left $300 in her bedroom and a $400 bank balance, leading police to conclude she had not run away.
The last substantial lead in the case came in 1993, when a farmer found parts of Kroh’s wallet along Wiconisco Creek.
“I think the rest of her wallet or her purse may be in that area,” Mull said. “Maybe there’s other possessions there, but it’s such a vast area…. We can’t just go dig up someone’s farm.”
About the same time a Virginia inmate told police he had killed Kroh, but that turned out to be a ploy to win a plea bargain with prosecutors in his case.
“It just didn’t pan out,” Mull said. “It wasn’t Tracy. “We couldn’t even put (the inmate) in the state of Pennsylvania at the time of her disappearance.”
Last month, Gene S. Powell of Powell, Rogers and Speaks in Halifax – where Kroh’s other sister, Kimberly A. Neely works – generated renewed interest in the case when his firm posted an additional $5,000 reward, bringing the total offered to more than $10,000.
“He got the idea the week before the anniversary of when she disappeared,” said Kroh’s mother, Ellen. “We’re hoping it might jar somebody’s memory.”
Attempts to have the case profiled on television’s “Unsolved Mysteries” and “Ohrah!” have been unsuccessful, but Powell said, he will contact “America’s Most Wanted” and keep trying.
The web site childrensearch.com contains a high school photo of Kroh, as well as a time-lapse photo showing what she may look like today, at 28.
Since the announcement of Powell’s reward offer, state police have received about 15 calls.
Much of the information though, was hard to track.
“It’s frustrating when people give you tips that are two and three years old,” Mull said. “You wonder why they didn’t call right away.”
For the family, the wait is nearly unbearable.
“It’s the not knowing,” Mrs. Kroh said. “It’s mind boggling.”
Because police have found n signs of struggle or evidence of foul play, she believes her daughter went willingly and may have known her abductor.
“You don’t know,” the mother said. “It could have been a best friend. I don’t trust anybody anymore.”
She and her husband check for their daughter at every turn.
“My life has changed so much. Even when we go driving in the car, I watch people,” Kroh said.
The memories are everywhere.
“Just watching TV, my husband will see something and say “Tracy would have liked that,” Kroh said.
“Even if I make something to eat that was her favorite, we think about her.”
Lykens police have followed leads as far away as Texas, and the Center for Missing and Exploited Children, Arlington, Virginia, joined the cause six years ago when it mailed more than 50 million cards, containing information about the case, to homes across the country.
“We’ve used divers, we’ve used psychics – well, people who call themselves psychics,” Mull said.
“We don’t turn down any help, but you have to evaluate it for what it’s worth.”
As with all cases of missing persons, time is the investigators’ worst enemy.
“That’s pretty much a common thread,” Mull said. “The longer it takes you to come to a conclusion, the more likely it is that there was some possibility of foul play.”
Mull emphasized, however, he has drawn no conclusions in this case. A time line of the investigation hangs in his office and the files of the Kroh case continue to grow thicker.
“We follow every lead we get,” he said.
Photo caption: Gene Powell of Powell, Rogers and Speaks paid for a full-page advertisement looking for information about Tracy Marie Kroh.
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Corrections and additional information should be added as comments to this post.