Barbara Jean Monaco was 18 when she traveled from Derby, Connecticut, to Virginia Beach with her older sister and checked into the Aloha Motel on August 20, 1978. In the early morning of August 23 she left the motel alone to walk six blocks to Peabody’s bar for a date with a bartender. Witnesses saw her get into a car on Pacific Avenue with four or five men and she never arrived at the bar or was heard from again.

Eight months later the family offered a $10,000 reward. A man then told investigators she had been abducted on Pacific Avenue, taken to a lakeside cottage near Oceana, and dumped in a lake; searches recovered a cinder block with a rope but not her remains. The informant reportedly passed a polygraph but stopped cooperating when denied immunity. Over time other persons of interest have been named and one main suspect died by suicide in 2001 after speaking with police, but no one has ever been charged.

The investigation is still an open, long-term missing person case in Virginia Beach and has been hampered by the passage of time and reluctance of witnesses to come forward. Did anyone in Virginia Beach in August 1978 see Barbara, the car she got into, or the men she left with?