Arundel Police Have 'Person of Interest'
By Raymond McCaffrey
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, September 6, 2007
Three months after a man called Anne Arundel County police looking for answers about the mysterious disappearance of his 14-year-old sister in 1976, homicide investigators say they have zeroed in on a "person of interest" in the case and await test results to determine whether the girl's remains were found last week in a well outside her former home.
Anne Arundel police Lt. David Waltemeyer said yesterday that forensic archeologists would examine evidence recovered Aug. 29 in a 20-foot-deep well at 51 Wishing Rock Rd., Pasadena, the address from which Karen Beth Kamsch reportedly disappeared 31 years ago. Waltemeyer said he could not "say we have found something or haven't found something" without the expert analysis.
"After 30 years of being in water in a deep well, we would not expect to find intact human remains," Waltemeyer said.
Waltemeyer said that although he could not "name a suspect" in the case, which is being investigated as a possible homicide, "I can tell you we have a person of interest." Waltemeyer described the person as a "close associate or family member" of the missing girl.
"It's someone close to her, and that's all I can say," Waltemeyer said.
Waltemeyer characterized the investigation as "very active."
Anne Arundel police didn't even have the case on record until May 15, the day after Karen's only sibling, Tate Kamsch, 44, of Ridgely, Md., contacted authorities concerning his sister's disappearance.
"I just really wanted to know what happened to my sister," Kamsch said at a news conference yesterday while standing near an enlarged school photo of his sister.
Kamsch, who was 12 when his sister disappeared, contacted police after a relative told him about searching the Internet in vain for any mention of Karen's case. Until then, Kamsch said, he "just believed what my family told me." Karen had moved out of her parents' home because she was having problems with her family, authorities say, and was living with a grandmother at the Pasadena address.
Karen had run away before, Kamsch said, and he hoped that she had done so again, that "she just wanted to get away from the whole situation and live a life."
As the years passed, the disappearance became a piece of family history, stored in "the back of the mind," he said. "But nobody mentions it."
When Kamsch contacted police, Karen's name did not come up in computer databases searched by authorities, police said. Since the filing of a missing person report May 15, police said, homicide detectives have interviewed Karen's friends and relatives.
Police said that a birth certificate shows that a Karen Beth Kamsch was born Jan. 19, 1962, in Baltimore and that records show she attended Brooklyn Park Senior School in 1976. Police said they were told that Karen moved in with her grandmother, Olga Kamsch, "after having problems with her family."
Police said Olga Kamsch was contacted by school officials in the winter of 1976 and told that Karen had been absent from classes. The grandmother, police said, found that Kamsch was not home and that "personal belongings, along with her winter coat, were still in her room."
Police said that Karen's grandmother has since died but that her parents are living, her father in Glen Burnie and her mother on the Eastern Shore. The Wishing Rock home is occupied by relatives of Karen's, police said.
Waltemeyer said Karen was once "a straight-A student" and had skipped sixth grade but that she had been "going through some difficult times," fell in with a different set of friends and "started getting into trouble."
Waltemeyer also said "Karen was suffering abuse at the time" of her disappearance, but he declined to elaborate.
Waltemeyer said investigators were drawn to the well by a cadaver search dog from Baltimore County and a tip from one of the people they had interviewed. The dried-up well had been capped. He said police found "certain things" that were not to be expected "at the bottom of a well after 30 years."
Police made a request that people contact them with any information they might have about the case or Karen's whereabouts.
"Let them know," her brother said, "so we know my sister's all right."
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