Her Best Friend Went Missing 42 Years Ago And After Decades Of Fighting For Answers She’s Throwing The Towel In
San Jose, California. It was July of 1979, and Diane Dye was 13-years-old. She lived in San Jose along with her older brother Dean and her parents.
That summer, Diane was aware that her mom and dad were going through a divorce, and she was very upset to hear of this news.
Diane confided in her friend Natja Kristy, who was also very close to her brother Dean, that she had made up her mind about what she was going to do.
She was planning to run away from her home.
Facebook; pictured above is Diane
“Diane and I were very close, and I even lived in their house much of the time during the latter part of the ’70s,” Natja wrote in a Facebook post on a page dedicated to Diane.
“One night when no one else was there except Diane and I, she told me she had decided to run away from home. She was very unhappy because of her parent’s divorce. Dean and she were left to fend for themselves at home and their mother was almost never there.”
“It was pretty much that way for a long time. I begged Diane not to leave, and after an hour or so she agreed to wait and think on it. I shouldn’t have left her alone, but I had not been home to my parent’s house for days and went home about an hour after she and I talked. That night hours later Diane ran away. She was never found. She was age 13 at the time.”
It was July 30th, 1979 that Diane ran away from home. Natja would be the very last person to speak to Diane before she vanished.
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Facebook; pictured above is a photo of Diane that was taken not long before she ran away from home
Not long after Diane disappeared, across the country in New Jersey a young girl had been murdered. She was nicknamed Princess Doe since nobody knew who she was, and for a while, the FBI thought this was actually Diane.
It would ultimately be determined that Princess Doe was not Diane, and it was back to figuring out where she had gone and what had become of her.
“Two years after Diane disappeared I shared an apartment with her brother Dean,” Natja explained on Facebook.
“Her disappearance destroyed him. The walls of the apartment were plastered with her pictures. I suffered in silence over her loss because I didn’t want to add to Dean’s suffering.”
“But I missed her to the point that I often had to leave the apartment and find someplace private to grieve. Sometime later he moved out of the apartment and I lost track of him.”
Around that time in December of 1981, someone thought that they had spotted Diane at a mall that was around 50 miles away from her home.
Allegedly, that friend had spoken to Diane, who had assured them she wasn’t interested in returning home and that she did not wish for a single person to know her whereabouts. That would be the last real sighting of Diane, and in the years that followed, Natja tirelessly worked to try to solve Diane’s case.
National Center For Missing & Exploited Children; pictured above is an age-progressed photo of Diane
Natja went on to create a Facebook page called “Where Is Diane Genice Dye?” She frequently posted any update she had on there, hoping things would lead to them getting closer to finding Diane.
Unfortunately, Diane’s case grew cold decades ago, and it’s been 42 years since she disappeared. Natja noted that Diane’s family no longer believes that she is alive.
“Some believe a murderer named Doug Young we knew back then before he was a murderer killed her,” Natja revealed in another post on the Facebook page.
“It appears he gave her a ride after she ran away or so he claimed. He denied having a thing to do with her death if she is dead and only gave her a ride. He also added that if she is dead he wanted 5 minutes in a room with whoever did kill her.”
“The FBI did not believe his story and he is their #1 suspect. They have been back to death row to question him on various occasions and he denies killing her. Numerous witnesses claim they saw her years after she ran away in Atlantic City working in a hotel. If this is true Doug is telling the truth. My guess is the girl in Atlantic City was a girl who looked a lot like Diane.”
Natja went on to say that there was a john from New York City who over the years had said one of his girls was Diane, but that was never verified either.
Sadly, in May of this year, Natja shared that she would be shutting down the Facebook profiles she had kept up for Diane after much consideration.
“Firstly there has been a lot of pain and heartache for everyone involved for far too long now,” Natja said in her final update.
“The hard work that went into solving this case and the countless people who put their hearts and souls into working at answering the ultimate question “what happened to Diane or where is she?” is beyond measure. Since the early days when we all found out Princess Doe was not Diane and realizing they were all wrong and we may have grieved for nothing over Diane’s death, and she might still be alive?”
Facebook; pictured above is Diane with her brother Dean
“You cannot imagine what it feels like to know those precious years when family and friends could have done much more if we had all known differently is like. It hurts and it’s a cold reality.”
She continued to say that Diane’s brother Dean and her dad Bill always appreciated the support that Natja provided them over the decades, but they had asked her around 10 years ago to stop her search for Diane.
“I just couldn’t give up,” Natja wrote. “I knew they needed to let it go and move on but I just could not let it go. I disregarded their wishes with my pie in the sky dream that one day I would be able to call them with the good news.”
Dateline NBC even reached out to Natja, intending to cover Diane’s story. Diane’s family did not want to be interviewed by them, and so, Dateline asked Natja if she would do it.
At first, Natja didn’t want to follow through with the interview at all, but then some of her friends pushed her to.
She did it, and then she got some terrible backlash from people who accused her of being attention-seeking.
“That upset me deeply,” Natja recalled. “That was not the case and it infuriated me to no end.”
After that, another person convinced her to take part in a different interview that appeared on YouTube, and once it was shared, people on the internet began suggesting that maybe she had been part of Diane’s disappearance.
panitan – stock.adobe.com
“People who commented on it were suddenly pointing their fingers at me,” Natja continued. “Maybe I had something to hide they suggested. As near as I could tell it was because I care too much, so there must be foul play on my part. “Whoever seems to care this much must have something to hide”. They said.”
“First time in 40 years anyone dared single me out. No one had any reason to before this. And they had no reason now.”
“I guess they do not understand the concept of what it is to be an empath. Which is what I have been since I was a kid. Sad folks, when you realize you can be seen as suspicious in our world today for simply caring too much. Both these interviews were deeply monumental mistakes that solved nothing and gave all of us a sense of false hope. It did nothing but prolong our heartache and pain.”
It’s sad to hear that someone who was so dedicated and devoted to finding her friend could be accused of something so awful, yet we all know by now that people cloaked by the anonymity of the internet can feel emboldened, empowered even, to be terribly ruthless and cruel.
Despite her desperately wanting answers, Natja knows that the likelihood of Diane’s case being solved is so low it’s practically impossible.
“If she is alive she likely knows we’re looking for her and she likely doesn’t want to be found. If she hasn’t changed her mind after 40 years she is not going to change her mind,” Natja concluded.
allenkayaa – stock.adobe.com
“If she is dead then it is not likely her body will ever be found if it hasn’t been found yet. Every Jane Doe we are aware of or made aware of was not Diane. And believe me, there are none we have not examined. I have always believed she maybe has been murdered and buried in some mountains somewhere. The point is it is over.”
“So long as these profiles are active we will have no peace. It is time to move on and let this go. I disregarded Dean’s wishes too long and now it is over for me too. 2 years ago I fell into a horrible nightmare that has literally ruined my life. I had to stop focusing on Diane’s case regardless if I wanted to or not. I cannot do it anymore even if I wanted to.”
Diane remains missing to this day. If you have any information related to her disappearance, you can contact the San Jose Police Department at 408-277-4141.
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