On June 18, 1982, 20-year-old Kelly Dove called the police at 2:27 a.m. to report an unsettling phone call she had received. She believed that the caller was a man who had been loitering outside the parking lot of the gas station where she worked in Harrisonburg, Virginia.
Just a few moments after hanging up with the police, she called back in a panic, saying that the same man had returned. He was driving a silver car. Police officers arrived at the gas station within two minutes of her second call, but she had mysteriously disappeared.
There were no signs of struggle. No money had been stolen, and her purse was left undisturbed. The police hadn’t cordoned off the area, so customers continued coming into the store.
Kelly’s family believed that crucial evidence could have been lost.
“When we walked into the gas station, there was no police tape,” said Kelly’s sister, Elaine Bergh. “They weren’t even doing fingerprints.”
“Customers were still coming in, thinking it was open. It was just kind of weird that they didn’t do that. I was told by one of the investigators that they didn’t take fingerprints because there would have been too many.”
The police began searching for Kelly and her abductor immediately. The man she described was around 25 years old, 5’10” tall, and weighed approximately 150 pounds. He also had blonde hair that reached his shoulders.
Kelly’s family and her husband, Dale Dove, drove around the area looking for her. Kelly’s sister, Debbie, who also worked at the gas station, noted that they often had to deal with inappropriate behavior from men during their night shifts, but nothing like this had ever happened before.
The community was disturbed by how Kelly vanished so quickly. They had always considered the area a safe place to live, but the crime proved that it wasn’t as safe as they thought.
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Weeks later, they still weren’t any closer to finding Kelly. On June 29, a reward of $1,000 was offered to anyone with information about Kelly’s disappearance. However, no one came forward.
Police speculated that Kelly’s abductor may have visited another convenience store about 30 minutes before she went missing. A clerk at a Hop-In convenience store reportedly saw a man drive by three times in a similar vehicle at 2 a.m.
Additionally, a man driving the same vehicle had exposed himself to a female employee just two weeks prior to Kelly’s disappearance.
At first, investigators thought that the man who exposed himself was the same person who had kidnapped Kelly. But by July 1982, they felt that the theory didn’t make sense. They followed up on the hundreds of leads they received, but they all turned out to be dead ends.
Finally, they decided to consult a psychic. Apparently, the psychic saw visions of roads, a residence, and a burial site, which matched the description of areas in Rockingham County.
The psychic also claimed that the kidnapper drove a refrigerated truck and had possibly injured his knee. Still, no new evidence was found.
Kelly was declared legally dead in 1989. Her case was reopened in 2020 and remains open today. Her family has never stopped seeking answers and continues striving for justice.
If anyone has any information about Kelly Dove’s case, they are urged to contact the Harrisonburg Police Department at (540) 434-4436.
By Emily Chan
Emily Chan is a writer who covers lifestyle and news content. She graduated from Michigan State University with a degree in... More about Emily Chan
