Ireland Ireland - Aleida 'Leidy' Kaspersma, 26, Kenmare, Co. Kerry, 2 July 1978

[OkieGranny]

http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/l...-want-closure-to-this-nightmare-34850109.html

It was on the afternoon of July 2, 1978, at this very spot, that a 26-year-old Dutch woman, who had been visiting Kenmare in Co Kerry, was last seen. No trace of the well-educated, well-travelled and well-loved Leidy Kaspersma has been seen since...

Leidy and Nick travelled in their Opel Record estate to Kenmare to do some shopping and Leidy is known to have dropped into a coffee shop. Locals later told a reporter she had seemed uneasy.

Nick told investigators that, on their return, at around 4.30pm, as they approached the secluded Woods family home, Leidy asked him to stop the car. He said she turned to him, looked him directly in the eye and kissed him on the mouth. Wheatley claims Leidy then got out of the car and started walking back along the road they had travelled... Leidy did not return that evening...

Incredibly, Leidy was not reported missing by Wheatley for 23 days and, on the day after she vanished, he left for Dublin to carry out some gardening work for a friend. He did not return to Kenmare until July 25. Since the day Leidy went missing, Wheatley has never contacted her family...

A full-scale Kerry Mountain Rescue search did not take place until March 1979 - some eight months after she vanished - and the whereabouts of the couple's car remains unknown.

http://www.doenetwork.org/cases-int/1085dfirl.html

 

[CoverMeCagney]

Chapter 7 - it's just a snippet of the story but lots of detail about how Leidy & Nick met.

https://books.google.co.uk/books?id...EIQzAH#v=onepage&q=nick wheatley poet&f=false

 

[Remi_Aventura]

The article in the Belfast Telegraph was published in all issues of the Irish Independent. http://www.independent.ie/irish-new...al-from-family-of-missing-woman-34846996.html

Here's the part I find dubious (although there are numerous dubious aspects of this case): The information imparted in the so-called deathbed confession could have been given by Woods to LE at the time Leidy went missing. A reason not to do that is that the truthfulness of the info would have been checked, and, I suspect, found wanting in truth. And what information was in this "confession"?

Due to space restrictions, the author of the article could not go into all that in the article---he simply said that the information Woods gave could not be confirmed or verified.

But here's what the information is: Woods said a young man in the area, with alleged IRA ties, who had been disowned by his family, had been known to have attacked young women both before and after Leidy's disappearance in those same forest areas. He named the young man. As it turns out, though, when Woods made the so-called confession, it appears the young man had died. So, no confirming anything from him!

Again, the information seems non-incriminating enough for Woods personally, so why not tell LE all that at the time??? Instead, his son placed some kind of notice on the Leidy Kaspersma FBook page, that the family should contact his father for further information on what really happened to Leidy. An intermediary did just that.

Also, the missing car. Locals say there is no way Leidy could be in the hills in that area or she or her clothing would have been found. As we discovered in the Bosnian and other mass grave situations, if something is buried deep enough, it won't be found by the usual LE searches. It might be time for some military-type tactical scanning equipment. If the vehicle is not found in the woods, then perhaps it travelled to Dublin. The question would be: who was the driver and did that driver have any passenger, alive or otherwise?

I think there was a quote in the article that "someone knows something." That sounds about right.

 

[CastlesBurning]

Bumping for Leidy, as this month is 42 years since her disappearance.

 

[dotr]

De cold case vermissing van 'Leidy' Kaspersma

Lees hier alles over de onopgeloste vermissing van Aleida 'Leidy' Kaspersma uit Zwolle. Heeft u een (anonieme) tip, laat het ons weten. Lees ook over andere cold case zaken op onze website.

www.coldcasezaken.nl

 

[snooptroop88]

I've been looking at Neptune Jane Doe (Neptune NJ 1980) and it has led me into the Leidy Kaspersma page. Neptune Jane Doe was between 20-30, auburn hair, about 130 lbs described as "tall and slender" and 7.5 shoe, unsure if this is UK or US but I'm guessing US. She was found with a shirt that had some designation referencing Copenhagen, and I'm guessing it was a manufacturer's tag because LE checked Interpol at the time for missing persons in Denmark. Neptune Jane Doe was found behind a Neptune, New Jersey bowling alley, her legs in a stream and blunt force trauma to her head. She'd been dead for weeks. The area where she was found in New Jersey is nicknamed the "Irish Riviera" because of all the Irish-Americans in the area.

436UFNJ

This is the sketch of Neptune Jane Doe:

Found a news story noting the $27 was actually stuffed in one of Neptune JD's shoes. And they also note she was wearing many necklaces, including a chain with a metal military-style dog tag. Article says they checked military records, and also contacted Interpol because of the "Copenhagen" on her shirt. She was wearing Zena jeans back in the 80s when Zena jeans were "a thing," so she had some money. Cash in her shoe and a comb in her sock, I'd guess she was somewhere/doing something where she couldn't bring a purse, which usually isn't bowling. And you would think a club with all the jewelry, but she had no IDs on her. So speculated she may have been someone from out of town visiting/staying with someone locally who told her he'd get her into a club or taking her out on a date. Or she may have been going out to hang out at a beach with someone or some group. There's a hotel nearby, the Crystal Inn Neptune, seeing it was built in 1964, and wondered if she wasn't staying there. I wonder if LE wasn't right to contact Interpol on the Denmark tag because it's extremely common to go braless in Europe v the US, and she had no bra. I know they checked for missing persons from Denmark, but Europeans travel widely across multiple European nations by train, it's very common, so she may not have been from Denmark, but elsewhere in Europe. I'm now wondering if this isn't Leidy, who's a Dutch national with an extensive travel history and someone who'd be extremely comfortable going abroad. Leidy had already been to the US.

Neptune Jane Doe

Clipping found in Asbury Park Press published in Asbury Park, New Jersey on 12/14/1986. Neptune Jane Doe

www.newspapers.com

Neptune Jane Doe was wearing a choker that appeared to be an unusual charm. This is an image of the charm:

To me, that little charm looks like it might be a hatchet charm...

Norse battle axe pendant (looks very similar)...

Or maybe like an antique phone charm...

A water sprayer charm?



The Neptune Jane Doe sketch to me resembles Leidy Kaspersma. Her general appearance and height match, and she had auburn hair. Neptune Jane Doe clearly loved jewelry and watched for fashion, and I know Leidy also enjoyed jewelry based on photographs, and she wore the same style of clothes. I know I saw someone speculating Leidy may have gone off and fit herself into a new world elsewhere, and I can't help but wonder if she's Neptune Jane Doe.

 

[Bit of hope]

'We know that something terrible happened to Leidy ... 38 years on, we just want closure to this nightmare'

Little has changed on the remote hillside road over the last four decades and the purple foxgloves still joyfully dance among the ferns on either side. But this narrow country road holds the darkest of secrets.

www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk

On this road Leidy allegedly stepped out of the car of her boyfriend Nick Wheatley and vannished, leaving her glasses and passport behind in the Woods's cottage. Het bankaccount untouched ever after. Nick takes of to Dublin and waits 23 days to "realize" Leidy is missing and takes of to Libanon in the months after. The car is never found. It takes 8 months for the Gardai to do a first proper search. Nothing found. Later the Woods refused Leidy's family on their grounds. Wheatley sticks to his BS story. No body, no evidence of a crime.

To me this sounds like something terrible happened to Leidy and IMO it's out of the question she travelled to America and is found as an UID years later. She had no reason to never contact her family again and her passport was left behind.

Did the Gardai ever consider that she might have been burried on the Woods property or she was hidden f.i. on an old cemetery, like Saint Fiachna's. Did they do a search at the Woods's property? Maybe she was indeed in Nick's car but no longer among the living. Very convient that the car was never found.

​

 

[snooptroop88]

Understood that the boyfriend is considered not to be trustworthy by many she knew, and this indeed could be the explanation. But I can't help but wonder if that were the case, why has she not been found in Ireland by now? It's been decades. Still, it is the most likely explanation.

But I wouldn't rule out the idea with Neptune Jane Doe. Leidy would have been gone two years at that point, she may well have ultimately contacted her family.

I do hope they find out what happened to Leidy. I know it's not going to be a happy answer no matter what it is.