After Mountain View High School had let out on the afternoon of March 11, 1987, eighteen-year-old senior Kim Kersey began walking the two-mile trek to her Vancouver, Washington, home, ten miles north of Portland, Oregon. Inexplicably, she did not arrive and did not call her mother, Kay Botsford, with an explanation.

The following day, Kay found her daughter’s schoolbooks and materials scatted across a wooded area Kim often used as a shortcut in walking home. Several pages from her notebook appeared to have been torn out. The signs were ominous and the police were summoned, but their bloodhounds lost Kim’s scent approximately seventy feet from where her items lay.

Kim Kersey remains missing forty years after walking into the woods.

Kim Kersey

A high school senior, Kim planned to marry following graduation. Her engagement ring, driver’s license, and some money were found left in her room. These findings suggested she had not run away from home.

That evening, Kim had planned to travel to Tacoma, one-hundred-thirty five miles north of Vancouver, to attend a basketball tournament with her fiancé, twenty-year-old Darwin Kiive, a dishwasher who lived near the city. She had purchased an Amtrak train ticket to Seattle, thirty-five miles north of Tacoma, but she had neither picked it up nor contacted Darwin.

No Contact From Kim

A person of interest in the disappearance of Kim Kersey emerged seven months later following the murder of another Vancouver woman.

Twenty-three-year-old Dail Schroeder had vanished during a late-evening walk on October 8. Several people had heard her screams and saw her being forced into a car on a well-lit road only two blocks from her home. Two days later, her body was found near a rural road in bordering Skamania County.

Dail Schroeder

Vancouver resident and career criminal Russell Stenger confessed to abducting Dail at gunpoint and forcing her into his car. After driving approximately fifteen miles, he raped her multiple times and tied her to a tree before shooting her with a .22-caliber rifle and dumping her body near State Highway 14 in the Columbia River Gorge forming the border between Washington and Oregon.

Stenger was convicted of first-degree aggravated murder and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

Russell Stenger

Kim Kersey and Dail Schroeder, both area women of similar physical statures, had disappeared while walking in residential neighborhoods. In addition, they lived only a few miles from each other, Dail residing only a few blocks from the high school.  The similarities were sufficient for investigators to suspect that Stenger had also killed the missing Kim.

With him locked up for life for Dail Schroder’s murder, Clark County prosecutors offered Stenger immunity if he confessed to killing Kim Kersey and leading them to her remains. The man who had willingly confessed to Dail’s murder, however, said he had nothing to do with Kim’s disappearance.

The Similarities Are Striking

Russell Stenger died of liver cancer in 2008 at age forty-eight. He is the only publicly identified suspect in Kim Kersey’s disappearance.

Other unnamed persons of interest include a convicted child molester who lived two blocks from where Kim was presumed abducted and several transients who had been living in the woods near the Kersey home.

Stenger Denies Abducting Kim

Kimberley Kay Kersey has been missing since March 11, 1987. At the time of her disappearance, she was eighteen-years-old, five-feet-two-inches tall, and weighed one-hundred-five pounds. She had blonde hair, blue eyes, pierced ears, and wore an upper dental retainer. When last seen, she was wearing a white sweatshirt with the words “University of Paris” imprinted in blue, pink, and yellow print, a pink turtleneck, light blue jeans white Keds sneakers and socks.

Kim’s parents and her stepfather, all of whom are now deceased, and her fiancé Darwin Kiive were cleared of involvement in her disappearance.

Still Missing

Kim Kersey would today be fifty-seven-years-old. If you have information relating to her disappearance, please contact the Clark County, Washington, Sheriff’s Department at 564-397-2036 or Detective Lindsay Schultz directly at [email protected]

2012 Age Progression To Age Forty-Four

SOUCRES:

• Charley Project
• The Columbian
• Doe Network
• KATU Channel 2 ABC Affiliate Portland, Oregon
• KOIN Channel 6 News CBS Affiliate Portland, Oregon
• NamUs