She Was 16-Years-Old When She Was Kidnapped In The Middle Of The Day As She Waited For Her Boyfriend To Pick Her Up: A Month Later She Was Found Dead In The Desert
Las Vegas, Nevada. It was January 26th, 1979, and everything that day started out as normal for 16-year-old Kim Bryant.
She got up that morning and went to school at Western High School, but when she never returned home that evening, her mom became worried and reported her as missing to the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department at 5:30 p.m.
Four days afterward, Kim’s boyfriend called the police to tell them that Kim had actually called him on the day that she disappeared.
Kim had told him over the phone that she wanted him to drive to come to get her later that day, and that she would be at the Dairy Queen, which sat across the street from her high school.
At 10:45 a.m., Kim’s boyfriend pulled up to the Dairy Queen, fully expecting her to be there, but there was simply no sign of her.
Authorities then spoke to everyone in Kim’s class at the high school, asking if they had seen her outside of school that day, and many confirmed spotting her by the Dairy Queen at approximately 10 that morning.
So what had happened to Kim in those 45 minutes between when her classmates saw her and her boyfriend arrived to get her? Where had she gone?
The day after Kim’s boyfriend relayed the information about his phone call to Kim to the police, someone call the police to say they had discovered Kim’s backpack.
Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department; pictured above is Kim Bryant
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Her backpack had clothes from her gym class inside, along with some of her books from school and her purse.
In the following three weeks, investigators worked hard to try to come up with any leads in Kim’s case, without any luck.
Then, a month after her disappearance on February 20th, 3 children came across her body.
Kim had been kidnapped, she had been sexually assaulted, she had been murdered, and then her killer dumped her out in the desert. Now, Kim’s killer left behind some of his DNA, but back in 1979, they didn’t have the technology that exists now.
And so, Kim’s case went cold for 42 long years, until a philanthropist and Las Vegas local by the name of Justin Woo gifted money to the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department with the intention of it being used to aid in a cold case investigation.
Detectives decided to invest Justin’s generous donation into Kim’s case, and they sent out the DNA from her killer to a company called Othram Inc.
Othram was able to figure out who killed Kim through genealogical research and advanced DNA testing, and several days ago they passed his name on to the detectives working Kim’s case.
Johnny Blake Peterson is the man who killed Kim, and the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department announced that in a press conference on Monday. Johnny died in 1993, so he, unfortunately, can’t be arrested and prosecuted for what he did.
“Kim was a beautiful girl with a bright future, and it makes me happy that something is being done to solve cases such as hers,” Kim’s dad said in a statement.
Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department; pictured above is a press release regarding Kim Bryant
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