The Disappearance of Kathleen Ranft

On April 5, 1985, 29-year-old Kathleen “Kathy” Ranft finished her shift at Lippe Tire Center in Seguin, Texas, and headed into the weekend. She was in the middle of a separation, moving into a new apartment, and trying to build a fresh start for herself and her three sons. That night, Kathy was supposed to meet friends at the Country Cabaret, a small nightclub off FM 467. She never made it.

The next morning, her 1980 Chevy Citation was found in the club’s parking lot. Inside were two cigarette butts and a child’s wristwatch. Back at her apartment, her purse and makeup sat untouched, but her wallet and keys were gone. Kathy was never seen again.

In the weeks that followed, the Guadalupe County Sheriff’s Office chased leads that led nowhere. Investigators even called in a Dallas psychic, who led deputies and reporters to dig the clay pits of Acme Brick, where Kathy’s estranged husband worked. The spectacle drew headlines but uncovered nothing.

Decades later, Kathy’s disappearance remains Guadalupe County’s most haunting cold case. With no suspects, little evidence, and only painful silence, her family has spent nearly forty years waiting for answers.

If you have any information about the disappearance of Kathleen Ranft, please contact the Guadalupe County Sheriff’s Office at [phone] or Guadalupe County Crime Stoppers at (877) 403-TIPS.

Sources: The Seguin Gazette-Enterprise, The Wichita Falls Times, The New Braunfels Herald-Zeitung, The San Antonio Express-News, KTSX.com, FoxSanAntonio.com, SeguinToday.com

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Gone Cold. Podcasts may contain violent or graphics subject matter.
Listener discretion is advised. Sageine, Texas, April fifth, nineteen eighty five,
Good Friday. The workday was winding down at lip Tire Center.
The move to a new location had everybody pulling long hours.

(00:23):
Just before six pm, twenty nine year old Kathy Ramft
stepped out the door and into the early evening light.
A young mother trying to steady her life after a
recent separation. She was in blue jeans and a blue
and white flowered western shirt, had a Seiko watch on
her wrist and the small diamonds on the wedding band.

(00:44):
She still wore nine tiny stones set in gold, shined
as they reflected against the sun. She was supposed to
meet friends later, maybe do some dancing at one of
the local bars, where neon glowed over a gravel lot
and the Jews box inside blared honky tonk. She'd been
going about a month, easing back into a social routine

(01:07):
while she got back on her feet. But Kathy never
made it inside the nightclub. By dawn, her car sat
in the parking lot locked. The owner swore it wasn't there.
At one am when he closed up the place, but
it was there at eight am when he returned. Two
cigarette butts and a child's wristwatch were found in the car.

(01:30):
Back at her apartment, Her purse and makeup were untouched,
but her wallet and keys were gone. Kathy was gone.
Over the next days and weeks, the sheriff's office beat
the bushes, the family pleaded for help, and a psychic
from Dallas led a caravan of deputies and reporters to

(01:50):
the yawning clay pits of the Acme brick plant. The
search became a spectacle, and then it stopped. No answers,
no resoulutelution, and no Kathy. Kathleen Laura Atwood was born

(02:30):
on February eighteenth, nineteen fifty six, in Harris County, Texas.
Known as Kathy to most, she grew up tight with
her mother, Glenn Francine. Later Glenn would say that as
an adult, her daughter called every couple of days routine
check ins that, in hindsight became anchors or timestamps. Like

(02:55):
a lot of young Texans of her era, Kathy stepped
into adulthood fast. In March nineteen seventy three, when she
was just seventeen, she married nineteen year old Ronald Keith Rodriguez.
On January fifteenth, nineteen seventy five, she gave birth to
her first child, a son named Keith Lee, and the

(03:17):
small family settled into New Bronfels, a town folded into
the bend of the Guadalupe and Como Rivers, somewhere between
the German bakeries and the honky Tonks, and between the
schlitterbond summers and harsh realities. And such a reality hit
Kathy early in nineteen seventy six, Ronald died while serving

(03:40):
in the United States Army. A teenage bride became a
young widow. Kathy was devastated, but kept going, raising her
boy with help from her parents. Then, in the late
nineteen seventies, she met Dennis Lee Rafft. The two married
on September first, nineteen seventy nine. The family grew quickly.

(04:05):
Jamie Lee arrived on February nineteenth, nineteen eighty and Aaron
Lee on September eighth, nineteen eighty one. To the world outside,
it looked like a second chance for Kathy. A husband,
three boys, and a predictable routine in Guadalupe County, but
the marriage didn't hold. Friends painted the picture of a

(04:29):
house with raised voices and hard edges. There were allegations.
One acquaintance would later say Kathy showed up at a
store with bruises and confided in her the fear she felt.
That person said Kathy told her that if she ever
left Dennis, he'd kill her. That allegation was made decades

(04:50):
after the fact, and while it's unclear if this particular
account was ever given to the police, it echoes what
investigators knew contemporaneous. Kathy had sought help from the Segeen
Women's Shelter sometime just before April of nineteen eighty five.
Earlier that year, Kathy and Dennis had separated. She was

(05:13):
in the process of moving out of the estranged couple's
mcqueeneye home and into her own apartment on Country Club
Drive in Segeen. She'd made the first payment and, according
to her mother, planned to move in on Easter weekend,
splitting time with work to get her place of employment,
Lip Tire Service, ready for its new locations grand opening.

(05:38):
She also helped her parents when they traveled, which was often.
Kathy would pick up the mail and mind the small
but necessary business chores. If you were looking for a
portrait of a person pulling her life together after a
life changing blow, that was Kathy in the spring of
eighty five, a mother with a job, a plan, a

(06:01):
paid four apartment, family obligations on deck, and a social
life she was renewing slowly but surely. Sageene, Texas, sits
about thirty five miles slightly northeast of San Antonio and
is the seat of Guadalupe County. By nineteen eighty five,

(06:21):
its population hovered around eighteen thousand. It was big enough
to have its own character and small enough that everybody
knew someone who knew you. The town had always been
a crossroads US Highway ninety running through Interstate ten just
to the south, and its identity was pulled between rural

(06:42):
tradition and creeping suburban change. Historically, Sageine was a farming town. Cotton, corn,
and pecans came out of Guadalupe County for generations. Oil
discovered in the Darst Creek field back in nineteen twenty
added a second boom. By the nineteen eighties, Segeen was

(07:05):
trying to balance those legacies with newer industries, service jobs,
and light, manufacturing the rhythms of life. There were still
small town Texas. Weekends meant work, school, and errands on
Austin or Court streets. Evenings and weekends meant church socials,

(07:26):
Friday night football, and honky tonks on the edges of town.
One of those was the Country Cabaret on FM four
sixty seven, a modest dance hall and bar that drew
in locals from Segeen, the small unincorporated community of Mcqueeneye
and beyond. It was buzzing neon, walking baselines, thumping from

(07:49):
the jukebox, and a gravel lot, the kind of place
where you could let yourself go and dance the night away.
Like a lot of Texas towns in the mid eighties,
sage was changing, but not fast enough to feel different overnight.
The economy was diversifying, but agriculture and oil still mattered.

(08:10):
Families were rooted, sometimes for generations, and gossip traveled quicker
than the waters of the Guadalupe River. When someone went missing,
especially a young mother of three, it did not happen
in silence. The absence echoed across the community. That was
the backdrop to Kathy Ramft's disappearance. Sageine in nineteen eighty

(08:35):
five was neither a faceless suburb nor an isolated farm town.
It was a place where everybody thought they knew everybody else,
and where a story like Kathy's cut through the surface
of small town normalcy to reveal something much darker underneath.

(09:04):
Good Friday nineteen eighty five played out with the normalcy
that most folks expect out of the weekday, even on
a holiday. Kathy ramped left Lip Tire Center at about
five point fifty pm. Her employer, Glenn Phillips, later told
detectives that was the last time he saw her. Kathy

(09:26):
was going out and she looked it. She wore blue jeans,
a blue and white flowered western shirt, a wedding band
set with nine small diamonds, diamond ear rings, a gold
chain with a diamond pendant, two other rings, and a
Sako wristwatch. According to her estranged husband Dennis, Kathy stopped

(09:47):
by the house they once shared sometime between nine and
nine thirty that night, grabbed a few things, and said
she was headed to the Country Cabaret, the Roadside club
out on FM four sixty seven, where she'd been showing
up for about a month. To dance and start a
new social life. The Country Cabaret wasn't the kind of

(10:08):
place where you'd miss a car in the lot. It
was a modest night spot, a bar for music and dancing,
with a parking lot where dust floated under the glow
of the headlights. Kathy was supposed to meet friends, but
they later told detectives she never arrived late night comings

(10:29):
and goings can be foggy in a bar parking lot,
but in the case of a missing person, the timing matters.
There was no car at one am, but at eight
am there was. It implied someone moved it overnight after
the last of the patrons drifted off, maybe someone who
knew the rhythms of the roadside club, and likely someone

(10:53):
who knew the rhythms of Kathy Ramft's life. It was
her car on paper. It was almost like she disappeared twice,
once between leaving work and the time she was supposed
to meet friends, and again when her car materialized at
a place on a night she was never seen in
the space between those two things, Easter weekend began. Authorities

(11:19):
had no choice but to make up for the time
they lost between the time Kathy was last seen and
when her disappearance was reported, But unfortunately they made the
choice to wait even longer. Early Sunday would have been
family food and kids in church clothes Instead. Dennis Rampft

(11:39):
contacted the Guadaloupe County Sheriff's Office to tell them his
estranged wife Kathy, hadn't come home for the holiday. The
reply he got was something families in the nineteen eighties
heard too often. You have to wait seventy two hours
to report a missing adult. It wasn't a law then
anymore than it is now, but it was a practice

(12:02):
that pushed many cases out of their most urgent hours
and into irreversibly lost time. By Monday morning, April eighth,
Kathy hadn't shown up for work. That's when Lip Tire
Center's owner, Glenn Phillips, called the Sheriff's office to reporter missing.
The official machinery finally started moving. One of the first

(12:26):
stops in the investigation was a place where Kathy was
supposed to have gone, a place central to the ongoing mystery.
The owner of the Country Cabaret told Guadalupe Sheriff's investigators
that when he closed at approximately one am on Saturday,
April sixth, Kathy's car wasn't parked there, but again at

(12:48):
eight am. When he returned, it was there, a nineteen
eighty Chevy Citation, sitting cool and quiet in the morning light.
Inside the car, investigation gaters found two cigarette butts and
a child's watch that belonged to one of Kathy's boys.
The car was otherwise unremarkable. There were no obvious signs

(13:11):
of a struggle. Back at her apartment, deputies found Kathy's
purse and makeup, although those items were left behind. Her
wallet and keys were missing, as if she'd run out
for a quick errand Sheriff Melvin Harborth's deputies did what
you'd expect. They talked to friends, neighbors, family, the estranged husband,

(13:35):
cabaret club regulars, anybody who might have seen, heard, or
known something. They learned Kathy had been planning to move
her eldest son into the new apartment that weekend, had
already paid the rent, and had intended to work Sunday
and Monday to help Lip Tire Center prep for the

(13:55):
grand opening of their new location. She had called her
mother on the third day, April fourth, and sounded just fine, busy,
forward looking and even optimistic about the small steps she
was taking in her new life. Her mother was unambiguous,
and so were the facts. Kathy didn't leave voluntarily. Glenn

(14:18):
told the paper she spoke with her daughter every couple
of days. If Kathy had gone anywhere, she would have called.
That she hadn't was totally uncharacteristic. Her parents, who traveled,
often depended on her to mind their affairs when they
were gone. Deputies documented Kathy's description. She stood five feet

(14:42):
six inches tall, weighed around one hundred and thirty pounds,
blonde hair, blue eyes. They described the clothing she was
last seen wearing, and sent the alert out to the
Texas Department of Public Safety Crime Analysis Section in Austin,
which related to stay wide. The Sheriff's office also pushed

(15:03):
information to a Missing Person's Task Force and Corpus Christie,
and canvassed the area around the country cabaret Honky Tonk,
in the apartment, in the car. In the margins of
the life of a single mother who vanished on a
Friday night, they found only the smallest artifacts, the purse

(15:24):
and a wallet and keys that were no longer where
they should be. Within two weeks, nothing had broken open,
No meaningful witnesses placed her at the bar, no credible
sighting turned up. The sheriff told the local newspaper, the
Sagen Gazette Enterprise, that they were checking out every lead,

(15:46):
but that no one had reported any contact with Kathy
at all since the evening she left work. The questions
lingered and hardened. Did she walk away from her life
or did someone end it? The family's answer never wavered.
Someone did this to her. May turned to June, and

(16:08):
desperation bled into experimentation. Sheriff Harborth called a Dallas based
psychic named John Ketchings, who had presented himself to agencies
around the state as a finder of missing people. Catchings
said he worked free for law enforcement and by his

(16:28):
own tally, had helped find a dozen missing people since
nineteen eighty, most of them dead. He'd appeared on the
television show That's Incredible and had the gift of turning
media moments into momentum. The Sheriff's office sent the psychic
a packet about Kathy, photos basics, the known timeline, and

(16:51):
on Sunday, June ninth, nineteen eighty five, Catchings arrived in
Guadalupe County reporters were allowed, even in curb bridged to
trail the sheriff, investigators, and catchings. What followed was part theatre,
part field exercise, and, depending on your tolerance for the paranormal,

(17:12):
part hope. A five car caravan rolled away from the
courthouse around two pm. In the motorcade was the sheriff,
the psychic and his son in law, investigating deputies, and
newspaper crews from Sagein and San Antonio. The route itself
reads like a map of the case. Two three pm

(17:36):
the apartments on Country Club Drive, Kathy's apartments. The convoy
barely slows, looping through the lot. Catchings says little, appears
to concentrate, then waives them. On two five the country
Cabaret on FM four sixty seven. They parked for three minutes,

(17:56):
no pronouncements. Back onto Highway forty six. Two thirteen Lip
Tire Center, Kathy's place of employment. The caravan passes without stopping,
headed for Mcqueenee to eighteen arrival in Mcqueeneye, the lake
community just east of Sageen, where the acme brick plants

(18:18):
vast clay pits sit behind gates and chain. Two twenty
three Pecan drive the home Kathy once shared with Dennis.
The car's idle a minute, then they move again. Two
thirty two past the Acme Brick Company on FM seven
twenty five, the third car almost hits a deer sprinting

(18:41):
across the road. It's a small detail that reads like
a warning in hindsight, the randomness of movement against a
staged procession. Two thirty seven WW Materials Company property deputies
and reporters get out near clay pits, catching wanders. Nothing

(19:02):
back in the cars. Three point thirteen Outside the Acme
Brick gate, investigators confer with plant officials. The convoy sits
in the heat. Three point thirty the group drives to
a high point above the main pit, a place where
you can see the slope fall away to a broad basin.

(19:23):
They stand at the lip. Nothing is said. Then they
drop down to a park along the Guadalupe River, circling
back to the office to talk with ACME management. Four
forty five pm. Back on FM seven twenty five, Just
down from the ACME gate, a short chained off dirt

(19:44):
road leads toward the pit catchings points over the basin.
He tells the sheriff he believes Kathy was strangled on
the night she disappeared, and that her body lies beneath
dirt and debris at the base of the pit's northern
slope hope. On Monday, June tenth, nineteen eighty five, Guadaloupe

(20:15):
County authorities returned to the Acme Brick company with manpower
and machines. About twenty Reserve deputies dug with picks and shovels,
while county crews used a backoe and a front end loader.
They were looking for missing woman Kathy Raft. They built
a crude road along the lower portion of the slope

(20:38):
and carved a platform so the heavy gear could work
without tipping. A pump drained water pooled in the basin.
TV crews from San Antonio came and went. A helicopter
thudded over the site, filming the search from the air.
The next day, they pushed deeper, talked about hosing the

(20:59):
slow to create controlled sides, and debated where exactly the
base of the northern slope ended. Catchings maintained his certainty.
He said the body was there. He said Kathy had
been struck on the head and strangled. He said the
pit would give her back. It didn't. On Wednesday, after

(21:22):
two days of digging, the operation ceased. The psychic search
ended without a body, without evidence, without even a clue
that might have justified the spectacle. In the aftermath, the
sheriff said aloud what he'd likely already believed because so
much time had elapsed. He thought foul play was more

(21:46):
likely than a voluntary disappearance. But without a body, those
words changed nothing. The investigation returned to interviews and phone calls.
The clay pits returned to the business of swallowing industrial waste.
The ACME brick plant, where they deployed and utilized vast resources,

(22:09):
was the employer of Kathy's estranged husband, Dennis Ramped. Summer
turned to fall on paper. The sheriff's office was busy larcenies, burglaries, assaults.
A year end report tallied numbers and clearances and average
jail stays, but Sheriff Harborth said there was only one

(22:33):
major unsolved case from nineteen eighty five, the disappearance of
Kathleen Ramped. It remained open. Kathy's parents continued to press.
Her mother repeated the facts that mattered to them. The
new apartment paid for the plan to move her eldest
in over the weekend. The routine phone calls, the easter promises.

(22:56):
She didn't keep in those rhythms. They heard their daughter's
voice in the silence. They heard everything else. A decade on,
on April fifth, nineteen ninety five, the family placed a
memorial in the classifieds. It read, in part, A million
times we thought of you, a million tears, We cried.

(23:18):
If love could have saved you, you never would have died.
They signed it, Mama, Daddy and your three sons ten
years had done nothing to cauterize the wound. During the
course of the initial investigation and beyond, there were rumors,
as there always are, people in Sageen recalled seeing Kathy

(23:42):
visit the women's shelter before she vanished, confirmed by investigators
later on. There were whispers about bruises. Decades later. In
twenty twenty two, an anonymous comment appeared online from someone
claiming to have known her, that Cathy showed up at
work with black and blue marks that she said Dennis

(24:04):
had threatened to kill her if she left. The post
was furious and personal. Officially, the Sheriff's office named no
suspects and identified no persons of interest. Deputies said there
was little evidence beyond the car. Whatever had happened, it
left almost no trace. A small town department in nineteen

(24:27):
eighty five could turn into a case file that would
stand up in court. Kathy's boys grew up. They navigated
life without their mother. What they were told, what they
believe belongs to them, what the public knows remains the same.
A Friday night, a car that wasn't there, and then

(24:48):
was a family waiting for a phone call that never came.
Time is a kind of solvent. It can erase or reveal.
In two thousand and eight, nineteen thirty four years after
the disappearance, Guadaloupe County Sheriff's Office Special Investigations and Cold
Case Unit pulled Kathy's file back into the light. Sergeant

(25:13):
Robert Murphy spoke candidly. The original investigators, he said, had
mostly passed away, the Texas Rangers were still assisting, and
the only real physical evidence had always been the car.
In other words, they had almost nothing to test, and
the few things they did have had already been tested

(25:34):
long ago with tools far less sensitive than what's available now.
Murphy emphasized a detail that matters Kathy had just dropped
her children at the babysitter before she disappeared. That simple
fact made the family's conviction feel even more immovable. This
wasn't a woman walking away from her life. She had

(25:58):
Easter on the calendar, a grand opening at work, a
move into a new apartment, and beloved kids to pick up.
In that twenty nineteen push, the sheriff's office restated what
had been said in nineteen eighty five, and again and again.
Since there were no suspects, they asked the same thing

(26:19):
they'd asked in the first days. If anyone knows anything, however,
small call. The number hadn't changed much, except now you
had to dial an area code. There's an odd dignity
to a cold file that never fully closes. If everything
is as it should be, it means someone still checks it,

(26:42):
still thinks about it, still puts the name back in
the paper or onto the evening news, in the hope
that the thing somebody didn't say in nineteen eighty five
will finally get said in twenty nineteen or twenty twenty five.
The sheriff who ordered the dig at the hit has
long since moved on the country cabaret on FM for

(27:05):
sixty seven faded into memory. Somewhere in that continuity, a
person who knows something is still alive. Kathy was twenty
nine years old, five foot six, around one hundred and
thirty pounds, blonde hair, blue eyes. On the night she
vanished Friday, April fifth, nineteen eighty five, she wore blue

(27:29):
jeans and a blue and white flowered western shirt. She
was also wearing jewelry, a gold wedding band with nine diamonds,
diamond earrings, a gold chain with a diamond pendant, and
two other rings, plus a Sakoh watch. For a short time,
For far too long, law enforcement chased the possibility that

(27:51):
she'd left by choice, but the time that has followed
argues otherwise. If you have any infra about the disappearance
of Kathleen Kathy Ramped, please contact the Guadaloupe County Sheriff's
Office at eight three zero three seven nine one two
two four, or call Guadalupe County Crime Stoppers at eight

(28:15):
seven seven four zero three eight four seven seven. If
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(28:37):
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