The Unsolved Disappearance of Kelly Dove

At 2:27 a.m. on Thursday, June 18, 1982, a police dispatcher in Harrisonburg, Virginia received the first of three 911 calls that still haunt the community to this day. On the other end of the line was twenty-year-old Kelly Dove, who was working the overnight shift at the Imperial gas station just off Interstate 81. Though she was calm for the most part, it was apparent that something had rattled her that night.

Kelly reported that she had just been the victim of an obscene phone call. While such occurrences were commonplace on third shift, this one was different in that she believed a man who had been inside the store a few minutes earlier had made the call from a payphone located in the parking lot. Though she didn’t go into detail, she described him as having been “dressed improperly.” Her mother would later say that she believed this was her demure daughter’s way of saying that he had exposed himself, which she would have found both disgusting and embarrassing.

Worried that he would be back, Kelly asked the dispatcher if they could send someone to check on her just in case, which they agreed to do as soon as possible.

Two minutes later, Kelly called again. With an urgency in her voice that hadn’t been there before, she pleaded with the dispatcher to send someone quickly. Just as she had feared, the man had returned and was cruising around the parking lot. Though she couldn’t see the license plate, she described the car as a silver Ford. After being informed that a patrolman would be there shortly, a relieved Kelly had hung up.

At 2:31, four minutes after the first call was placed, Kelly phoned 911 for the third and final time. Panicked and clearly frightened, she had screamed that the man was coming in. The dispatcher then heard a shuffling noise before the line went dead.

Officers arrived on the scene a short two minutes later. Though barely any time had passed since Kelly’s last call for help, there were no signs of her or anyone else inside the store or in the parking area.

Having a look around, the patrolman found Kelly’s belongings, including her purse and a magazine she had been in the process of reading when she was interrupted. There was no evidence of a struggle. As impossible as it was to believe, it had only taken one hundred and twenty seconds for someone, presumably the man in the silver car, to abduct Kelly and whisk her off into the night, never to be seen again.

With a population of around 20,000 at the time, Harrisonburg authorities had little experience with investigating stranger abductions. As a result, any evidence the perpetrator may have left behind was hopelessly compromised. In a comedy of errors, instead of immediately locking down the store and going over every surface with a fine-tooth comb, officers allowed oblivious customers to enter the building, contaminating a possible crime scene as they went.

When someone asked a member of law enforcement why they weren’t dusting for fingerprints, he had allegedly replied that it was pointless. Since countless individuals came and went from the establishment at any given time, he felt that the odds of finding the abductor’s prints would be akin to looking for a needle in a haystack. Consequently, an opportunity that would only come around once was lost.

A search of the premises revealed that the money was still in the till, ruling out robbery as a motive. No blood or other body fluids were visible to the naked eye. Nothing appeared to be out of place or missing, nothing that is, except for Kelly.

While the possibility that Kelly had left voluntarily was posed, the notion was quickly dismissed. The happily married mother of a four-year-old daughter whom she adored, she had no reason to run away from her life. A hard worker, she was saving money at the time to pay for college. After exploring that avenue, everyone, including investigators, agreed that Kelly was taken from the gas station by force, which didn’t bode well for her.

In an effort to establish a timeline for the night in question, detectives spoke with those closest to Kelly. They learned that working at the Imperial gas station was something of a family affair. Kelly’s sister Deb was the manager, and the other female siblings were employed as clerks. In a cruel twist of fate, Kelly wasn’t even scheduled to work on the night she went missing. Reliable to a fault, she had traded shifts with one of her sisters, putting her in the path of an opportunistic predator.

Kelly’s mother Rachel recalled that she had phoned the station at 11:00 p.m. to chat, but her daughter was busy with customers and told her she’d call back later. At midnight, she did just that. They had spoken for a few minutes without incident. Kelly hadn’t been in distress and had made no mention of the man whose presence would prompt her to contact the police later on.

When detectives interviewed Kelly’s sisters, each had mentioned that putting up with sleezy customers and obscene phone calls went hand-in-hand with the job. The knowledge that women worked the night shift alone seemed to bring out the creepers who got their jollies from harassing the clerks, whom they seemed to think were there solely for their amusement.

Her siblings were convinced that there must have been something particularly sinister about the guy in the silver car, otherwise Kelly would never have called 911 in the first place. Fearless and not one to overreact, under normal circumstances, she would have written him off as a run of the mill pervert and gone back to reading her magazine. On this occasion, however, she had been scared enough to ask the police to come check on her. It was obvious that Kelly had sensed she was in real danger and, as it turned out, she was right.

Though suspects were scarce, there were a few promising leads early on in the investigation. A clerk at a nearby convenience store came forward to say that they saw a man in a silver or grey Ford driving around the area at around the same time that Kelly was taken. They had gotten a good enough look at him to help a police sketch artist create a composite drawing of his face. The man was described as being 20–25 years old, 5’10, with long, dirty blond hair.

Kelly’s parents have contended from day one that the perpetrator is someone she knew from high school who had been arrested for various deviant offenses, including making obscene phone calls and indecent exposure. While this was certainly a promising lead, it wasn’t without its pitfalls.

If the identity of the man in the silver car was known to Kelly, it’s curious that she didn’t give his name to the 911 dispatcher. Since how well they knew each other back in the day is in question, it’s possible that she simply hadn’t recognized him. It could also be that her nerves were so on edge that she had blanked on his name. To date, the man remains a person of interest. Not wanting to overplay their hand, detectives who reopened the investigation in 2020 have asked the family not to publicly name the suspect.

The task of finding out what happened on that night back in 1982 has proven more challenging than most. Due to the passage of time, potential witnesses have passed away without ever telling their stories. In addition, the little bit of evidence that was found at the scene, which detectives have kept a tight lid on, is in danger of deteriorating to the point of no return. With the clock winding down, the urgency to solve the case is palpable among the dedicated cold case detectives who are determined to bring Kelly’s abductor/killer to justice.

In the aftermath of Kelly’s disappearance, her husband Dale gave legal custody of their daughter to her maternal grandparents. Today, the little girl whose mother went to work one night and never came home again, has two children of her own.

In 1989, six years after she was last seen, Kelly Bergh Dove was declared legally dead. The person responsible for her death, whoever he may be, remains at large.

Harrisonburg, Virginia is a college town that rests along I-81. With this in mind, it’s quite possible that Kelly’s abductor got on the interstate, destined for parts unknown, after forcing her into his vehicle, probably at gunpoint. A fighter through and through, those who knew Kelly agreed that she wouldn’t have left with him unless he had given her no other choice.

While two minutes doesn’t seem like enough time to commit a kidnapping, authorities who tested the theory determined that an armed individual could have taken Kelly from the store and driven off in as little as fifteen seconds. Let that sink in for a minute.

Currently, detectives are hoping that DNA testing will help lead them to Kelly’s killer. While the waiting game never gets easier, they’re optimistic that the break that has eluded them for decades may finally be within reach.