The Disappearance of Elizabeth Ann Campbell Part 1

Part 1 of 2. On a night in late April of 1989, 20-year-old Elizabeth Campbell and her boyfriend had a disagreement about studying. It turned into a full-blown argument, and Elizabeth stormed off on foot from his Killeen home, heading back to her home in Lampasas, some 28 miles away. A short time later, she called her boyfriend from a 7-11 store in Copperas Cove, a town in between Lampasas and Killeen, and the two argued again. After hanging up, she called home, but no one answered. Elizabeth was never seen again.

If you have any information about the disappearance of Elizabeth Ann Campbell, please call the Copperas Cove Crime Stoppers at [phone] or Bell County Crime Stoppers at [phone].

You can also submit a tip online at https://copperascovecrimestoppers.com/team/missing-elizabeth-ann-campbell

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The Austin American Statesman, kxxv.com, kcentv.com, kwtx.com, Unsolve Mysteries Season 2 Episode 8, and charleyproject.org/case/elizabeth-ann-campbell were used as sources for this episode. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
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(01:11):
Located about sixty eight miles north of Austin, mostly in
Corriel County, Copper's Cove, Texas, began as a small ranching
and cotton farming community in the eighteen seventies. By nineteen
oh one, a variety of businesses lined the downtown streets
of the quaint, rugged town, including an opera house, general stores,

(01:34):
a steam gristmill, cotton gin, and hotels, among many others.
Marred only by the difficult and desperate era of the
Great Depression, the population of Coppera's Cove slowly but steadily grew,
speeding up substantially when the United States Military established the
training center Camp Hood in nearby Bell County as a

(01:56):
permanent fixture. Fort Hood is located just outside Colleen, which
is just east of Copprace Cove. A couple towns over
to the west of coppers Cove lies Lampasas. These three
cities are comprised of working class folks by and large,
though each can boast humble, agriculturally based beginnings and quintessential

(02:21):
picturesque early and mid century built country downtowns. As it
approached nineteen ninety, especially considering population, they couldn't have been
more different then. Colleen, at approximately sixty thousand residents, was
home to a large community college called Central Texas College,

(02:41):
a private college called American Technical University. Fort Hood essentially
and by proxy, divisions of military contractor companies. Lampasas in Stark, contrast,
had a population of just over six thousand. Most traveled
out of town for work, as the largest employer was

(03:02):
the modest sized school district. Copper's Cove sat somewhere in
the middle of Lampasas and Colleen, with about twenty four
thousand residents. Many were employed as either military or civilian
workers at Fort Hood, the small city's largest employer. In
April of nineteen eighty eight, a tragic case touched each

(03:25):
of these three cities in different ways. As the investigation unfolded,
or perhaps failed to unfold, the disappearance of twenty year
old Elizabeth Campbell only became further shrouded in mystery. Elizabeth

(04:04):
Ann Campbell was born on May thirty first, nineteen sixty seven,
to parents Tom and Samsoon Campbell, who met in nineteen
fifty nine while he was stationed with the US Army
in Korea. Elizabeth grew up in Lampasas, Texas, with her
four siblings. She was the youngest of the Campbell family,

(04:25):
the baby and was full of personality and talent. As
a compulsive neat freak, she'd get on her siblings for
their messy rooms. Her mom described her as a pistol.
Elizabeth could have a hot temper at times. Still, she
never really got into trouble, and if it looked as
though she might, Elizabeth knew how to get around it.

(04:47):
Samson remarked that whenever she was mad, Elizabeth would turn
sweet as could be, kissing her mother's cheeks repeatedly until
it was impossible to be upset. A popular girl among
her peers, Elizabeth never had trouble making friends, and unlike
plenty of children and teenagers, she treated her elders with respect,

(05:09):
which demanded that very thing in return. At Lampasas High School,
where she graduated in nineteen eighty five, Elizabeth played saxophone
in the band and was a member of the drama
and Spanish clubs. Her sister, Carol remembers her as a
beautiful girl and young woman perfect. She said. Elizabeth was

(05:32):
close to her parents and siblings and often joked about
raising her sister's kids for her, whom she adored. By
nineteen eighty eight, Elizabeth still lived with her parents in
Lampassas while attending college in Colleen, about twenty eight miles
to the east. She'd been accepted into Texas A and
M In college station where she planned to attend the

(05:56):
upcoming fall semester after finishing her last semester at SA
Central Texas College, or CTC. It was quite a ways
from home, but the prospects, no doubt, excited her as
much as the experience made her anxious. She planned to
study marine biology there. Elizabeth didn't really party hard and

(06:17):
had a boyfriend named Ricky Ray who she met at CTC.
He was her first serious boyfriend. She lived a quiet,
low key lifestyle typical of a dedicated, responsible and motivated
college student. But there was a downside to her sort
of sheltered, small town upbringing. Elizabeth was naive. Her mother Samson,

(06:41):
told a reporter with the Austin American Statesman she wasn't
knowledgeable about dangers in society. Monday, April twenty fifth, nineteen
eighty eight, started out like any other day for twenty
year old Elizabeth Anne Campbell. She attended classes at Central
Texas College in Colleen. When those were done for the day,

(07:03):
she headed to the seven eleven at West Rancier Avenue
and North Gilmer Street, where she worked part time as
a cashier. After her shift was over, maroon purse and
school books in hand, Elizabeth headed to her boyfriend's house
on Altamira Drive, a little less than two and a
half miles away. She had a trigonometry test the next

(07:26):
day and planned to study with him to prepare. Ricky, however,
wanted to study English. A heated argument ensued, which paused
briefly when Elizabeth called her parents in Lampassas to see
if they could come pick her up. As they prepared
to do just that, Ricky was heard in the background
promising Elizabeth he'd give her a ride. She told her

(07:49):
parents never mind and got off the phone. The next morning, Tuesday,
April twenty sixth, nineteen eighty eight, sam Soon Campbell awoke
and discovered Elizabeth's bed was empty. The porch light, too,
was still on. Usually the last person to return home
turned off the light, and the prior night that meant

(08:12):
Elizabeth Samson was instantly worried her youngest hadn't called to
check in and report a change in plans, something that
all her children did without missing a beat, whether they
still lived at home or not. The long distance calls
were why she and Tom's phone bill was so high
Every month. Sam Soon woke up her daughter Barbara at

(08:34):
around nine point fifteen and asked her to call Ricky Ray,
Elizabeth's boyfriend. Though he'd given his word he'd take Elizabeth home,
they began arguing again. Ricky told them she stormed outside
to wait on him, but he was angry and was
ignoring his promise. After waiting for Ricky for what she

(08:54):
presumably felt was too long, Elizabeth took off on foot.
That was sometime between nine thirty and ten pm. He said.
Not only was Ricky the last person to see Elizabeth,
he was also the last to hear from her. That
was about an hour later, when she called him from
a seven to eleven in Copper's Cove, about twelve miles

(09:17):
from his house, to see if he'd come pick her
up and take her the rest of the way home
because he had to work. Ricky declined to do so,
even though the road between Copper's Cove and Lampassas was
dark and desolate. When Barbara called him looking for Elizabeth,
Ricky apparently suggested that she might have caught a ride

(09:38):
to her other sister's house, which was at a CTC
housing complex in Colleen, but she didn't have a phone.
Sam soon asked her daughter Barbara to drive the thirty
miles to see if Elizabeth was there. Ricky Ray also
rushed to her other sister, Carol's house. The two had
worked the late shift together the night before, so Carol

(10:00):
was aware Elizabeth had taken off on foot earlier in
the evening and was aware her sister had called Ricky
from the seven to eleven in Coppra's Cove. When Ricky
burst through Carol's door, he frantically asked if Elizabeth had
been there. She hadn't. Then Elizabeth's sister, Barbara would later

(10:20):
comment began their nightmare. When no one had heard from
their daughter for twelve hours. Tom and Samsoon Campbell drove
the seventeen miles to the police station in Copper's Cove

(10:43):
to report her missing. Because Elizabeth Campbell was an adult,
the policewoman at the front desk told them they couldn't
file a report until she was missing for seventy two hours,
which isn't and wasn't true. She isn't missing. Tom Laid
recalled the officer as saying, you just don't know where
she is. He and Samson knew their daughter and they

(11:07):
knew she was missing. Tom tried to explain, but it
was no use. As they turned away, they overheard the
policewoman till another officer, we don't have time for hysterical parents.
No official ground or aerial searches would be conducted. Not then,
not ever. Confused, angry and disillusioned with law enforcement, Tom

(11:31):
and Samson knew they couldn't wait seventy two hours, but
they also had no idea what to do or where
to start. There was no handbook. Regardless, the parents hit
the ground running. They headed to the seven eleven. Ricky
Ray told them Elizabeth had called him from Once there,
they spoke with the clerks, one of whom remembered their

(11:53):
daughter's dilemma The night before. She'd used the store's phone
to call her boyfriend and Colleen, the clerk said, and
it turned into an argument. Elizabeth then told the clerk
she was going out to the payphone to call her brother,
who also lived at Tom and Samsoon Campbell's place. She
didn't want to use the store phone, Elizabeth told the

(12:14):
clerk because the call to Lampassas was long distance. Samson
remembered the phone ringing, but couldn't answer it Before it stopped.
She'd unplugged the phone in her and Tom's room so
they could sleep uninterrupted, something they did regularly. The clerk
had one more key piece of information for the parents.

(12:36):
Their daughter was dropped off at the store by someone
driving a light green AMC Gremlin. Samson and Tom hopped
in their car and headed to Colleen in search of
such a vehicle, and they finally found one in the
parking lot of the campus of Central Texas College. They
watched the car until the owner approached and then asked

(12:57):
to speak with him. He did give Elizabeth a ride
home the night before. The man who owned the Grimlin
told them he'd been working late in the college's computer
lab and saw her walking down the service road at
the college's exit off Highway one ninety. Though he didn't
know her, the man recognized Elizabeth from school. He told

(13:19):
Tom and Sam soon, so he turned back and offered
her a ride. He lived in Copper's Cove and let
her out at the seven to eleven at Highway ninety
and Martin Luther King Junior Drive before heading on home.
Armed with this new information, Elizabeth's parents headed back up
to the police station. They also told the police that

(13:41):
their daughter hadn't been by her place of employment to
pick up her paycheck, which had become available early that day.
A missing person's case was finally filed. Still, it took
quite a bit more persuasion to get a detective to
look at the case. When they finally did decide to investigate,
Tom and Sam soon said they then had to convince

(14:04):
the Copperscope police to go to the last place Elizabeth
was seen and talk to the witnesses there. According to
the parents, that took another twenty one hours. Precious time
had been wasted for no good reason. The trail seemingly
already cold. Samson and Tom, on the other hand, wasted

(14:25):
no time printing up flyers with Elizabeth's photo and description.
They distributed them to area residents and businesses. But that
was only the beginning. On the flyers, twenty year old
Elizabeth Ann Campbell was described as looking younger than her age.
She's five feet two inches tall, the description continued, and

(14:47):
weighs ninety seven pounds. Her hair is long and brown,
which is also the color of her eyes. Elizabeth was
wearing new blue jeans, white tennis shoes, and possibly a
white shirt. She's half Korean. The description was followed by
the Campbell's home phone number. Later flyers included other information

(15:10):
Elizabeth should have been carrying or wearing a seven to
eleven smock with a name tag, a faded yellow vest jacket,
and carrying her school books, papers, and a maroon colored purse.
To the Campbell's surprise, a worker at one place they
visited had already clipped their daughter's flyer out of the
newspaper and hung it up in his store's window before

(15:34):
they'd even been there. To Samsoon and Tom's dismay, some
stores didn't want the missing person's poster displayed in their businesses,
some referring to it as a clutter. They felt they
needed all the help they could get, so the Campbells
wrote letters to state and federal politicians, other police agencies,

(15:54):
including the area sheriff's departments, and the Texas Missing Person's Clearinghouse.
They knew Elizabeth had been abducted. It might not have
been as obvious to police, perhaps due to lack of
training and experience, but saved the signs of a struggle.
All the signs were there because they were reluctant to

(16:15):
assign foul play to the case. The cops wouldn't devote
much manpower, not at first, but there was no more
time to waste. Tom Campbell took an extended leave from
his job at Houston and Galveston Tugboat Company to search
for Elizabeth. He and Sam soon began traveling across Texas,
handing out flyers at police stations, under the windshield wipers

(16:39):
on cars at businesses, to folks walking around any given
city Houston, San Antonio, Dallas, and all the small cities
in between, anywhere and everywhere. Then seventy miles northeast of
Copper's Cove in Waco, they got a lead. In May

(16:59):
nighteen eighty eight, just a couple weeks after Elizabeth Campbell vanished,
her mother walked into a Waco gas station to ask
if she could hang a flyer in the window there.
Manager Roger Anyon took the flyer and immediately upon seeing
Elizabeth's photo, had a realization this was a woman he
had seen recently a couple weeks ago. Anyon told Samsoon,

(17:24):
a car drove up to the fuel pumps, an Asian
man got out of the driver's side door, went to
the passenger side, and pulled out a young woman sitting
there by the arm above the wrist it was different
than sweethearts holding hands, Anyon said. They walked into the store.

(17:44):
Anyon was working the counter, he continued, and not letting
go of the young woman's arm, the man single handedly
pushed a twenty dollars bill from a stack of cash,
presumably to pay for gas. He asked if there was
anything else the man needed, and he just shook his head.
At that time, the young woman looked up, Anyon said,

(18:06):
and he asked if he could help her. The man
said something in a language he didn't understand. The gas
station manager went on. The young woman dropped her head
down as if she'd been scolded, and they left the store.
That was the end of that. Anyon later told the
television show Unsolved Mysteries. Samson and Tom Campbell were stunned

(18:30):
by this witness account. It gave hope hope that their
daughter was still alive, and it wasn't the last time
such a witness account materialized. A composite sketch was made

(18:54):
of the man. Waco store manager Roger Anyon claims to
have seen holding onto the arm of a young woman
who matched the description of Elizabeth and Campbell. An individual
at a store in Lampassa's County reported to police that
a man resembling the sketch came in on both May
eighteenth and May twentieth. He bought a blue cream soda,

(19:18):
which Elizabeth's father Tom said is what his daughter drinks.
There were other supposed sightings that included Elizabeth. According to
Michelle Christensen, a clerk for a Copperscove store two miles
away from the seven to eleven where Elizabeth was last seen,
she also saw the missing young woman when Samsuon Campbell

(19:40):
showed Christensen a flier, she told the mother she recognized
the photo. About two weeks after she disappeared, an Asian
man came into the store holding a woman by the
wrist as they ordered ice cream, him strawberry and her vanilla.
The man never let go. When the a young woman
looked up, Christensen says she verbally observed that she looked sad.

(20:06):
The woman dropped her head, looking back down out of
eye contact. She was being pulled around by the man,
who had a mean, rough look to him. Christensen remarked.
She later told her story to Unsolved Mysteries, as did
another woman named Virgie Johnson. On July tenth, nineteen eighty eight,

(20:28):
one hundred and eighty three miles from Copper's Cove in Garland, Texas,
just outside of Dallas. Johnson said she parked her car
outside a gas station and headed in to pay for fuel.
As she walked in through the door, she bumped into
a young woman coming out. The woman said, excuse me.
Johnson said she felt like she wanted to say something else,

(20:51):
but was acting like she was being watched and shouldn't
be speaking to anyone. When she later saw a picture
of Elizabeth Campbell, Johnson says she knew it was the
girl she bumped into because both had a tooth overlapping
another on their right sides. The four witness accounts led
both Tom and Samsoon Campbell to believe that Elizabeth was

(21:14):
being held against her will, controlled by human traffickers. This
led them to begin visiting strip clubs and stocking the
streets where prostitution is known to take place. They began
asking truck drivers to haul and hand out their flyers
and sent them to major cities across the United States.

(21:35):
Though police departments they sent the flyers to were less
than helpful, the parents said many individual police officers were
by providing useful advice and tips. Samson and Tom hired
an unlicensed private investigator out of Dallas, who tried their
hand on proving the trafficking theory. The information the PI

(21:56):
provided only strengthened their belief that their daughter was still
alive but unable to contact them. What exactly that information
is is publicly unknown still, and although the Campbell's believed
in the sightings, they and police, who were much more skeptical,
were unable to confirm them. Of course, in the end,

(22:18):
the sightings did little to further the case. Elizabeth's boyfriend,
Ricky Ray, was eliminated after alibi witnesses confirmed his whereabouts.
A polygraph examination solidified his innocence in the eyes of police.
Ricky later expressed disappointment in himself for not picking up Elizabeth.

(22:41):
I was thinking of myself. I was a stupid ass,
he said. With his account of events in mind, the
Copper's Cove police wondered how Elizabeth Campbell got from his
house to the spot where a fellow student picked her up.
Had she walked it, it would have taken approximately two
hours to get to the Acts Road near Central Texas College. However,

(23:03):
she arrived there in less than an hour, meaning that
at some point on her walk, Elizabeth must have been
given a ride. Usually, the television show America's Most Wanted
requires a suspect to cover a story, but on September
twenty eighth, nineteen eighty eight, they ran a segment about
Elizabeth's disappearance. It was six months after the fact. Tom

(23:28):
Campbell continually contacted Unsolved Mysteries asking them to produce an
era segment on his daughter's case. They finally agreed to,
and the show aired twice, the earliest in November nineteen
eighty nine and the other in May of nineteen ninety.
Each time it aired, the episode generated around two hundred

(23:50):
calls of possible sightings all over the country, most of
which the Campbells themselves attempted to chase down. Nothing came
of them. By December nineteen eighty nine, less than two
years after Elizabeth's disappearance, the Campbell's sold a home Tom
inherited for half its market value, just to keep up

(24:10):
the funds they needed for travel flyers and to supplement
the family's income as Tom took extended absences from work,
their monthly phone bill in a time before cell phones
allowed you to call virtually anywhere without an extra charge
were unimaginably exorbitant, once setting them back over one thousand dollars.

(24:32):
Private eyes were just as expensive. A psychic the family
hired out of desperation provided nothing useful, less than nothing.
In fact, sam soon demanded her money back from the clairvoyant.
We're selling off everything we've got, piece by piece, Tom
Campbell told a reporter for the Austin American Statesman. I

(24:54):
finally had to go back to work. We're getting to
where we can't keep the lights on. But their search
was hardly over, and the family began contemplating selling virtually
everything else they owned to keep up their efforts, including
the house where Elizabeth had grown up their home. The
family had been through so much, done so much on

(25:16):
their own. Sometimes they slept in dingy motels or in
their car, and often put themselves in harms way, but
nothing had panned out. In December nineteen ninety one, Samson
and her daughter Barbara chased down a lead in Dallas.
A woman named Sue had called the toll free tip

(25:37):
line the Campbells had since set up, and said she
thought she'd seen Elizabeth in a strip club there. The
Campbells were familiar with the area. They'd spent time visiting
club after club, handing out flyers and asking folks if
they'd seen Elizabeth. No one had This time, too, Elizabeth

(25:57):
was nowhere to be seen. Media coverage of the case,
which was lacking to begin with outside of the local newspapers,
had slowed to a crawl and eventually stopped completely save
anniversary stories. The Austin American Statesman fortunately revisited the case
here and there, often concentrating on the family's plight with

(26:20):
genuine human interest articles. Samsoon and Tom Campbell continued to
devote everything they could afford monetarily, physically, and emotionally to
finding their daughter, but the media, besides a handful of outlets,
had long moved on. Then, in nineteen ninety two, a
major lead materialized nearly two hundred and thirty miles west

(26:44):
of Copper's Cove, a piece of evidence that, if acted
upon when it was originally discovered, might have been the
key to solving the case. That and another potential suspect
next time on Gone Cold, Texas True Crime. If you
have any information about the disappearance of Elizabeth Ann Campbell,

(27:07):
please call the Copper's Cove Crime Stoppers at two five, four,
five four seven one one one one, or Bell County
Crime Stoppers at two five, four, five, two six eight,
four seven seven. You can also submit a tip online.
We'll provide a link in this episode's show notes. If

(27:28):
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light on unsolved homicides and missing persons cases, get the
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(27:50):
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