New search for evidence in decades-old missing woman case - 13 WTHR Indianapolis

Police are searching for new evidence in the case of a woman who went missing almost two decades ago.

Investigators and family members have been searching for Kathy Fry for more than 18 years, but in the past few weeks, a new lead provided new hope in a cold case.

Fry disappeared in November 1993. She was last seen at her boyfriend's Greenwood home. He told police he went to work and when he came home he thought she'd left for her sister's in Fort Wayne. She never got there.

Investigators never found a crime scene. They never found the 28-year-old Fry's car and never found her body.

"She's vanished. It's almost like she didn't exist," said Fry's nephew, Joe Lewis.

The Indiana State Police list Fry as one of their cold cases and a presumed murder victim.

"We did have her declared legally dead," said Laverne Barker, one of Fry's sisters. "Somebody has to know something. Somebody just doesn't come up missing like that."

Fry's family learned Indiana State Police divers would be searching water in Johnson County this month. Investigators launched the search after interviewing a person about the case last year.

"After 18 years, anything is better than nothing," said Barker.

Eyewitness News has learned a search did take place. Police told Fry's family and Eyewitness News they found nothing.

Now, the family is even more frustrated by a request they keep making to the Indiana State Police. They want to see investigators' files on the case. According to ISP, there have been as many as 10 detectives who have worked on the Fry case. The latest detective is the only one assigned to it and has been on the case since 2000.

"We do not share investigative files with people that aren't law enforcement related. We don't do it. Period," said ISP Capt. Dave Bursten.

"You've had your chance. It's been 18 years. If you take on the responsibility of finding somebody and you don't live up to that responsibility, it's time for you to give somebody else a chance," said Lewis.

"Tragically, there are some cases that never get solved. Will this be one of those cases? I don't know," said Bursten.

Fry's family said they'll never give up their search for answers, even though with each year that has passed, it has gotten harder for them to hold onto the hope that those answers will ever come.

Fry's family also said it's not only been hard for them to not know what happened to Fry, its just as hard to think of a suspected murderer out there free, who may never be charged.