Who killed Barbara Jean Kemp? And why does no one seem to care?

[midnight_inthegarden]

This is my first post to web sleuths - my apologies if this isn't in the right spot..

Barbara Jean Kemp was a 19 year old female, killed on December 6, 1976, and found dumped on the side of a dark country road in Volney, NY (upstate NY). There has been no movement on her case since 1976-1977. From what I have gathered by talking to a few of those in the community who knew Barbara from school, there was the assumption that she "got around", hitch hiked and frequented bars and well, "what can you expect to happen?" I've tried to speak with those now in charge of the case - they could not be more standoffish or less helpful. My FOIL requests for any information have been denied. Mind you, the report on the NYS trooper website is just flat out WRONG. Her date of death is wrong, as is her height. If you can't even get the most basic facts of the case right..how can you expect to solve it?

All that I am looking for are thoughts and ideas about what I do know about the case could mean..

Who: Barbara Jean Kemp. 19 year old female. Approximately 5'1", 123 lbs, with shoulder length brown hair, and hazel eyes. Last seen by her family at 1 am on December 1, 1976 in Phoenix, NY. She left the home at 1 am and called the local police station to discuss "family problems." (No other further details on what this means). Her where abouts are murky from Dec 1- Dec 6. The police have never released any clear time line. <modsnip: no source link>

She was said to have had "boyfriends" including one steady boyfriend (unknown who this is), who was not in the area at the time of her death and was "cleared as a suspect."

Where and when: Barbara Jean's body was found at approximately 8:40pm on Monday Dec 6 1976 by a group of passing motorists who thought they saw a bundle of clothing on the side of the road. It was dark by 4:30pm, the temperature was between 38-40 degrees Fahrenheit. Some snow was on the ground but it was not snowing. It was a full moon, but it was cloudy. She was found near the Owen-Illinois Glass Plant (which was built but not yet officially opened until May 23, 1977.) It is a dark country road, and she was dumped right off the road, about 1 minute from a county highway. There is little reason to travel that road unless you live on it. But there are houses very near to where I believe she was dumped. It was believed she had been on the side of the road for approximately 1 hour before she was found (so let's say between 7:00pm - 8:00pm. ) The papers do not say if they believe she was killed 1 hour before, or just dumped but I am guessing she was killed 1 hour before.

<modsnip: no source link>

When the body was found, it was reported on the radio and her mother contacted the police to say her daughter fit the description. She was then identified on December 7, 1976.

<modsnip: rumors and anonymous comments on other sites are not allowed>

My questions and thoughts:
Why dump her in front of the factory (granted it was empty and maybe easy to pull into, but it was easy to spot her from the road on a dark night). Why not try to conceal her better? Why not just dump her in a ditch? Do you think they wanted her to be found?

She was wrapped in the sheet and the bag to prevent blood transfer inside a vehicle or the bed of a truck. If this evidence has been maintained I have to imagine the sheet and bag, and whatever her legs were bound with, came from the perp. No murder weapon was found (per the papers.) With advances in DNA technology, there is a high likelihood an unknown DNA profile could be obtained and then genetic genealogy used to find who these items belonged to.

She was fully dressed for the cold weather. So she was likely hitchhiking and the wrong person picked her up? How likely is it she was killed in the vehicle if she was then wrapped and tied up? Less likely. But still, she was fully dressed ..not how you would be dressed if you were hanging out in someone's home. She could have been redressed..but why? Just throw her clothes out the window or burn them...

The location of her body makes it seem like someone local...or someone who had recently worked building the glass factory (but if that's the case why drop her off at a location you could be tied back to?)

There are numerous cases from the surrounding 5 years of young women, hitch hiking, or walking that were stabbed in the neck or chest. All unsolved to my knowledge.

It seems like NO ONE where I grew up seems to know or care what happened to Barbara. But I do - and I get it, I am just a nobody, but Barbara's story is not unlike those of women in my family that had a hard upbringing and were just trying to find themselves in the world. Her life was brutally and senselessly taken from her. She mattered then...she still does.

Thank you for reading. I welcome all thoughts and comments.

Barbara Jean Kemp (1957-1976) - Find a Grave...

Barbara Jean Kemp, 19, of 773 Homestead Ave., Phoenix died suddenly Monday, Dec. 6, 1976. Born in Fulton, she had resided in Phoenix most of her life. She attended Phoenix Central School. Surviving are her parents, Mr. and Mrs. Thomas (Lois) Kemp, Phoenix; three sisters Eva, Pauline and Shirley...

www.findagrave.com

Homicide Victim: Kemp, Barbara Jean

Last seen: 12/5/76 in the village of Baldwinsville Remains found: 12/7/76 in the town of Volney

troopers.ny.gov

The location of the glass plant is 123 Great Bear Road Volney, NY (if you want to use google maps to make the 1 min drive from County Rt 57 to the general location of the dump site.

The photo of the house was her childhood home (now demolished) at 773 Homestead Ave, Phoenix NY. Now listed as 7 Homestead Ave ( a new house built on the site.)

T

 

[STLBlues]

Wow, great write-up on this case. I don't really have any thoughts to add but, I will definitely follow this thread.

 

[STLBlues]

@midnight_inthegarden Have you thought about reaching out to a local news source to see if they'd be willing to dig into this case and write an article or run a TV news story on it? That might get some interest generated at least on a local level.

 

[midnight_inthegarden]

@midnight_inthegarden Have you thought about reaching out to a local news source to see if they'd be willing to dig into this case and write an article or run a TV news story on it? That might get some interest generated at least on a local level.

Yes! I have definitely thought about it. A Syracuse reporter recently did a podcast on unsolved homicide from the Syracuse NY area that I was very impressed by. I thought it might be worth it to reach out to her.

 

[Gruffin]

Probably has something to do with December 5, 1976 (when she was last seen alive) being the centennial of the Conway Theater fire in Brooklyn. Guess the '76 bicentennial celebrations didn't do for the killer(s) what he wanted. The night of November 1, 1974, Lisa White, Kim Benoit, and Kathy Kolodziej all vanished in towns centered about Clinton Corners, NY (68.5 miles from each), and the latter two missing were eventually found dead a few weeks later. Those three cases all have possible railway-tunnel disaster references, especially because November 1 is the anniversary of the 1918 Malbone Street wreck in Brooklyn, which happened at a railway tunnel south of Prospect Park and not far from the site of old Ebbets Field. But the Malbone Street wreck killed (almost, according to the most standard best guesses) 100, while the 1876 fire killed about 300. I guess those murders referencing Brooklyn disasters felt to the murderer or murderers like they were in a good way to help give a reward or meaning of some sort to whomever, but not sufficiently apparently, because three boys were murdered (presumably—one has never been found) in Montreal on November 1, 1984, with the first one happening near the old ballpark for the Brooklyn Dodgers' Class A minor league affiliate (where Jackie Robinson started). On September 6-7, 1975, there were three attacks that seem to relate especially to the September 6, 1943, Congressional train wreck and (in one case) to the Gulf Hotel fire in Houston the following day: the murder of Pamela Mayhew and the shooting and rape of her friend south of Statesville, NC, the disappearance of Sylvia Lwowski in Staten Island, and the murder of Terry Cornell in Syracuse. Edna Christine Thorne had vanished June 24, 1975, near the site of the Congressional wreck (79 dead) in North Philadelphia, the same day Flight 66 (113 dead) crashed at JFK. Here's a period newspaper article mentioning that Koldziej (vanished from Cobleskill, found in Richmondville) and Cornell were viciously stabbed like Kemp and left in isolated area: Vicious Stabbings of Girls Similar.

November 1, 1950, there was an attempted attack on Truman that left a White House police officer and a Puerto Rican separatist would-be assassin dead after they exchanged gunfire.
November 1, 2018, the centennial of the Malbone Street wreck, James Polite used a marker to deface the walls of historic Union Temple synagogue near the other end of Prospect Park with anti-semitic writings like “kill all Jews”. He also wrote there “Free PR” next to a drawing of a Puerto Rican flag. The September 6, 1943, wreck was on the anniversary of the President McKinley assassination. So what about the July 2, 1881, assassination of President Garfield? There was an explosive-plant explosion (50 dead) on July 2, 1918, near Syracuse in Split Rock. Where Terry Cornell was eating at the Avalon restaurant or bar was on Route 175 near where it comes into Glenwood Avenue. Route 175 there is called South Avenue, which ends to the north at Slocum Avenue, as in the sidewheel steamer General Slocum fire that killed over 1000 on June 15, 1904, in the East River, and to the south ends at Route 173, which goes right through Split Rock. The Congressional wreck happened next to a Glenwood Avenue. After motorman Jacob Kiefer missed signal S176, his train crashed into Train No. 175, causing the Rockville Centre wreck of February 17, 1950 (32 dead). About nine months later, on November 22, 1950, motorman Benjamin Pokorney of Train 174 crashed into 780, causing the Kew Gardens or Richmond Hill wreck (78 dead). I'm guessing that the approximate nine month datewise difference made the weirdo murderers think that somehow the Rockville Centre wreck somehow begat the Kew Gardens wreck akin to how biblically Jacob begat Benjamin. The wreck of the runaway Federal Express, Train No. 173, into Union Station, DC, on Martin Luther King's birthday in 1953, a few days before Eisenhower's first inauguration, amazingly didn't kill anybody, but it was very dramatic, the GG1 locomotive ending up in the basement of Union Station. German agent and wife murderer Erich Muenter detonated an explosive device inside the US Capitol on July 2, 1915, and the next day shot financier J.P. Morgan, Jr., twice (Morgan quickly recovered). During World War I, to preserve anonymity, German agents may have found it preferable to convince would-be saboteurs to kill and blow things up to serve disaster spirits as opposed to convincing them to do it for the Central Powers, though honestly some Germans like von Papen actually may have believed in the malarkey. Anyway the whole killing over disasters is something that may have took off here during World War I. In late summer 1952, Oswald stayed with his half-brother John Pic in the Yorkville section of Manhattan, the center of German-American Bund activity before WWII. I have a feeling that when as a young teen he was playing hookey in NYC, which is what he did often there, he was getting sodomized by weirdos simultaneously telling him about the patterns between disasters, assassinations, murders, and sabotage, and it went to his head, causing him to kill JFK on the 13th anniversary of the Kew Gardens wreck. Presidents Lincoln, Garfield, and McKinley were all killed over sidewheel paddle steamer incidents, imho. Lincoln assassination conspirator Atzerodt was born in Prussian Saxony, and so it makes sense that Prussia could be where this occultism came from, though it tends to spread widely (yet thinly and sporadically) worldwide.

 

[dotr]

Homicide Victim: Kemp, Barbara Jean

Last seen: 12/5/76 in the village of Baldwinsville Remains found: 12/7/76 in the town of Volney

troopers.ny.gov

Basic Information

Race: White
Gender: Female
Age: 19 years old
Height: 5' 8"
Weight: 125 pounds
Eyes: Hazel

Barbara Jean Kemp was last seen on December 5, 1976, in the village of Baldwinsville, NY. On December 7, 1976, her body was found on Great Bear Road in the town of Volney, not far from the former Miller Brewery Plant. It had been rolled up in an undisclosed material and dumped on the shoulder of the roadway. The cause of death was attributed to multiple stab wounds. Barbara had many friends and often frequented bars in the Baldwinsville and Phoenix, NY areas.

 

[NVESTIG8]

@midnight_inthegarden Have you thought about reaching out to a local news source to see if they'd be willing to dig into this case and write an article or run a TV news story on it? That might get some interest generated at least on a local level.

@midnight_inthegarden
I agree with the above commenter in that your write-up is well-written and very thorough. I can feel your passion for seeing this case solved.

<modsnip: quoted post was snipped>

I have a membership to Newspapers.com and I did find an abstract (could not view entire article) from an article about the murder of Mary Pat Sullivan. She was killed 18 months after Barbr and in Fulton, NY. At the time, law enforcement was drawing similarities between her murder and Barbara’s. I could not find any other details as to whether or how that case was solved. On another abstract, in 1997, one of Barbara’s brothers stated that the police had not been in contact with them in 15 years.

This case definitely has my attention. I think the key here is to get someone involved that can draw attention to the case, as the previous poster mentioned.

 

[skylersymmer]

If she worked at a bar that served a lot of construction workers and she was found at a factory that hadn't been opened yet (presumably had been a building site/ongoing construction site), I can't help but wonder if the police looked into regulars at the bar / those who worked on that site prior to it opening? MOO