Kristen Modafferi

Case background and investigation

Kristen Deborah Modafferi had turned 18 three weeks before she disappeared. She had just finished her first year as an industrial design student at North Carolina State University, and in June 1997 she travelled to the San Francisco Bay Area to take a summer photography course at the University of California, Berkeley. She rented a room in a house in Oakland and took jobs at Spinelli's coffee shop in the Crocker Galleria in San Francisco's Financial District and, on weekends, at the cafe of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

On Monday, June 23, 1997, she worked the morning shift at Spinelli's, which ended at 3 p.m. According to the North Carolina missing-persons organization CUE Center, she had asked for directions to Baker Beach that day. At about 3:45 p.m. she was seen on the second level of the Galleria with a blonde woman who has never been identified, and ABC7 News reported that a bank camera recorded her withdrawing cash. She did not attend the first day of her class on June 24.

Her parents reported her missing to Oakland police a few days later, and the department has held the case since because she lived in that city. According to Wikipedia's summary, search dogs followed her scent along the route of the 38 Geary bus line toward Sutro Heights Park, but nothing belonging to her was recovered. A $50,000 reward was offered.

In July 1997 a man named Jon Onuma telephoned a local television station and claimed that Modafferi had been killed by two women. ABC7 News reported that he later admitted making the call, said he had never met her, and has never been charged with any crime; his then girlfriend has also denied any connection. ABC7 reported in 2017 that the FBI had cleared both and closed its file, while Oakland police still regarded them as persons of interest.

Private investigators working with the family returned to the Oakland house in 2015 and 2017. ABC7 reported that a cadaver dog alerted near the basement and that a forensic scientist detected chemical compounds associated with human decomposition between two houses. A subsequent police dig in the basement did not locate remains, according to published accounts.

The difficulty her parents faced in getting help for a missing 18-year-old, who was legally an adult, led to federal legislation. Kristen's Law, signed in 2000, funded organizations that assist in the search for missing adults; its funding lapsed in 2005. The case remains unsolved.