Thirty-six-years after storming out of her boyfriend’s home following an argument, Elizabeth Campbell remains missing. Some fear one of the worst possible fates short of murder for her, that she was kidnapped and forced into a life of prostitution.

Elizabeth Campbell

The youngest of the five children of former Army marine engineer Tom Campbell and his Korean wife Sam Soon, twenty-year-old Elizabeth Campbell, lived with her parents in Lampasas, a town of approximately 7,000 people seventy miles north of Austin. She was also a student at Central Texas Community College in Killeen, thirty miles east of Lampasas. Elizabeth planned to attend Texas A&M University in the fall and major in marine biology.

Elizabeth With Her Parents

After attending her classes on April 25, 1988, Elizabeth completed her shift at a 7-Eleven in Killeen at 9:00 p.m. She was picked up by her boyfriend, Rickie Ray, also a Central Texas student. They went to his house in Killeen to study with several other students.

College Student

After arriving at Rickie’s home, an argument ensued between him and Elizabeth culminating with her storming out at roughly 10:00. Approximately forty-five minutes later, she called him from another 7-Eleven pay phone along Highway 190 in Copperas Cove, ten miles west of his Killeen home and twenty miles east of her home in Lampasas. She told him she had caught a ride there and asked him to pick her up.

Still upset with each other, they again argued. An exasperated Elizabeth said she would call her parents or brother to get her before hanging up.

Elizabeth’s brother did not receive a call. Her parents were awakened by a phone call around midnight, but the caller had hung up when her mother answered.

Rickie And Elizabeth

Elizabeth is believed to have been driven the several miles from Rickie’s house to the Central Texas campus. A female student thought she saw her exiting a light-green Gremlin driven by a man who she believed was also a student at the college. He was never identified.

Soon thereafter, a Central Texas student working in the school’s computer lab saw Elizabeth walking along a service road near the campus. Recognizing her as a fellow student, he gave her a ride to Copperas Cove, where he lived. He offered to take her to Lampasas, but she did not want to inconvenience him any further. A grateful Elizabeth said she would call her boyfriend to pick her up.

The student dropped Elizabeth at a 7-Eleven on United States Highway 190 in Copperas Cove. He remembered the time as 10:48 p.m. and did not notice anyone following them nor anything out of the ordinary.

Geography Of The Cities

A clerk observed Elizabeth using the outside payphone to call Rickie. Shortly thereafter, he saw her get into a silver or white car, possibly a GMC or a Pontiac, with a maroon landau vinyl top. The driver proceeded to head south, the direction opposite of Elizabeth’s hometown of Killeen.

This was the last confirmed sighting of Elizabeth Campbell.

Elizabeth Is Last Seen At A Payphone

In the two weeks following Elizabeth’s disappearance, multiple sightings of her were reported across east-central Texas, three of which were deemed particularly credible, although they were not confirmed.

Sightings Reported

The first sighting, on May 1, six days after Elizabeth’s disappearance, was in Waco, seventy miles northeast of Copperas Cove. Convenience store clerk Roger Anyon recalled seeing an oriental-looking man at a gas pump filling his tank. As the pump was running, Roger saw the man open the passenger side door and literally pull an oriental woman from what he thought was a dark blue or black car. He could not recall the car’s make.

As the couple walked into the store, Roger noticed the man held the woman by her wrist and that she was noticeably uncomfortable. Roger felt it strange as the posture did not appear to be a boyfriend/girlfriend hold.

As the man paid for the gas, the woman remained silent and kept her head down before looking at Roger as if she wanted to say something. When Roger spoke to her, the man squeezed her wrist harder and said something in a foreign language to her in a scolding manner. The woman then abruptly looked back down without saying anything.

To Roger, it appeared as if the woman were being punished for looking at him and attempting to speak to him.

Roger Anyon

Shortly thereafter, in Copperas Cove, only two miles from the convenience store where Elizabeth was last seen, Michelle Christensen believes she saw the missing co-ed in the ice cream shop where she worked. The woman was again in the company of a rough-looking oriental man who was again holding her wrist. She also did not speak and always looked down.

Michelle Christensen

On July 10, six weeks after Elizabeth disappeared, Virgie Johnson believes she saw her, again at a convenience store, in Garland, one-hundred-eighty miles northeast of Copperas Cove. As Virgie entered the store to pay for her gas, she says she literally bumped into a young woman exiting the store. Apologetic and appearing frightened, the woman repeatedly looked back at a man, who appeared oriental, seated in the driver’s seat of a car. Virgie saw the young woman entering the car which the man then drove away. She also could not recall the car’s make, but, like Roger, she believed it was black or dark blue.

This reported sighting of Elizabeth Campbell was considered the most promising because Virgie recalled the young woman having a tooth overlapping on one side, a physical characteristic of the missing woman.

Virgie Johnson

Roger Anyon, Michelle Christensen, and Virgie Johnson all believed the woman they had seen was Elizabeth Campbell.  The nature of the woman’s actions suggested she was being held against her will.

At the time, police believe an illicit underground pipeline in Central Texas was funneling Asian prostitutes to buyers in Dallas and Houston. Some theorized Elizabeth was abducted and forced into that lifestyle.

Sociologist Lois Lee, founder of Children of the Night, an organization that rescues young women from prostitution by providing counseling and helping them find shelter, says the actions of the man seen with the woman believed to be Elizabeth may have been part of a systematic process of degradation which took away her identity and forced her to assume a new one, ultimately that of a prostitute.

The young woman Virgie Johnson bumped into at the Copperas Cove convenience store was alone. If the woman was Elizabeth, many have questioned why she did ask for help. Dr. Lee says the degradation could have escalated to the point where she was completely brainwashed and unable to do so.

Police, however, could not confirm the woman was Elizabeth and found nothing suggesting she was forced into the prostitution industry.

Was Elizabeth Being Held Captive?

On May 6, 1992, over four years after Elizabeth Campbell’s disappearance, her purse was found in the evidence room of the Crockett County Sheriff’s Department in Ozona, off Interstate 10, two-hundred-twenty miles west of Copperas Cove. They had no record showing when the purse was turned in. Sheriff Jim Wilson thought it was between mid-1988, perhaps as early as late-April, the month Elizabeth disappeared, and before January 1, 1989, when he took office.

The purse was in good condition, showing no signs of being damaged or having been in the elements for an extended period. Elizabeth’s makeup, hairbrush, and car keys were missing, but her driver’s license, credit card, social security card, and military identification card were inside, as was her checkbook, though, oddly, the deposit slips had been torn out.

Despite extensive television broadcasting and newspaper advertising, the person who turned in the purse never came forward.

Forensic testing of the purse and its contents produced no physical evidence relating to Elizabeth’s disappearance. In April 2023, investigators announced they hope to have the purse re-examined with advanced DNA testing.

Elizabeth’s Purse

Elizabeth’s boyfriend, Rickie Ray, was cleared of any involvement in her disappearance. He passed a polygraph test, and the other members of the study group confirmed he was at his home that evening after Elizabeth left.

Rickie Is Cleared

Some have speculated that Robert Rhoades, AKA the Truck Stop Killer, may have abducted and murdered Elizabeth Campbell. He has been convicted of killing four people, one of whose body was found near Ozona in 1990, where Elizabeth’s purse was found two years later.

Rhoades is suspected of raping and murdering over fifty women from 1975-90. As a long haul trucker, he made frequent trips through central Texas, but police have not named him a suspect in the disappearance of Elizabeth Campbell.

Robert Rhoades

Circa 1988

Executed Texas serial killer Kenneth McDuff is not a suspect in Elizabeth Campbell’s disappearance. He was not released from prison until 1989, the year after she vanished.

Not One Of McDuff’s Victims

Police would like to question the man who picked up Elizabeth from the Copperas Cove 7-Eleven on the evening she was last seen. He may have been driving a light green Gremlin and may also have been a Central Texas College student.

Investigators would also like to identify a caller who phoned the police from a payphone that evening reporting a woman matching Elizabeth’s description walking eastbound on Highway 190, the opposite direction from Copperas Cove and from her home in Lampasas. The caller claimed to be from Copperas Cove but provided a fake name and address.

One week after Elizabeth’s disappearance, the Lampasas hospital received a call from a man implying that Elizabeth had been injured and inquiring if the ambulance transporting her had arrived at the hospital. This caller has also never been identified.

It is not known if it was Elizabeth or another person who phoned the Campbell home shortly before midnight on the evening of her disappearance.

Odd Phone Calls

And Unanswered Questions

The man seen with a woman possibly being Elizabeth Campbell in the weeks and months after her disappearance was approximately five-feet-seven-inches tall and weighed around one-hundred-sixty pounds. Appearing to be in his early thirties and of Asian origin, he was described as rough-looking, having acne scars on his face, and possibly having plucked his eyebrows. He wore a silver martial arts medallion on a gold chain. He would probably now be in his mid-to-late sixties.

Authorities, however, are not certain the woman seen with this man was Elizabeth Campbell.

A Composite Of Elizabeth’s Possible Abductor

Elizabeth Ann Campbell has been missing since April 25, 1988, when she was twenty-years-old. At the time of her disappearance, she was five-feet-two-inches tall and weighed approximately one-hundred pounds. She had brown hair, brown eyes, and both of her ears were double-pierced. Elizabeth had scars under her chin, on her forehead near her hairline, and on her right eyebrow. She also had a mole in the center of her back between her shoulder blades, and a birthmark on her right buttock.

Elizabeth is of Caucasian and Korean descent. She spoke some Spanish and knew a few Korean words. She smoked Virginia Slims and Capri cigarettes, was allergic to cola beverages, and had occasional sinus problems. She wore eyeglasses or contact lenses for distance vision, but she did not have either with her on the evening she disappeared.

Rumors persist that Elizabeth was forced into a life of prostitution, but authorities say they have no evidence suggesting she was abducted into the sex-slave industry.

Was Elizabeth Forced into Prostitution?

When last seen, Elizabeth was wearing blue jeans, white tennis shoes, a white shirt with green lettering and a green collar, and a lemon-colored vest-style jacket similar to the one pictured.

Elizabeth’s Attire When She Disappeared

Elizabeth Campbell would today be fifty-six-years-old.

If you have any information on her whereabouts, please contact the Copperas Cove, Texas, Police Department at 817-547-4273.

A Computer-Aged Image

Of Elizabeth Campbell

The 7-Eleven where Elizabeth worked in Killeen is near the Fort Hood Army Base. I could not find anything suggesting someone from the Army Base may have abducted her.

No Known Fort Hood Suspicion

SOURCES:
• Charley Project
• Dallas Morning News
• Doe Network
• Lampasas Dispatch Record
• Unsolved Mysteries