The Disappearance of Barbara Jean Monaco: A 47-Year Mystery in Virginia Beach

The summer of 1978 was supposed to be a celebration of new beginnings for Barbara Jean Monaco. The 18-year-old from Derby, Connecticut had just celebrated her birthday on August 19th and was embarking on a week-long vacation to Virginia Beach with her older sister Joanne and a friend, checking into the Aloha Motel on 15th Street on August 20th. What should have been a joyous post-graduation getaway would instead become one of Virginia Beach's most enduring and heartbreaking mysteries.

Barbara Jean, known to friends as "BJ," was described as a vibrant young woman with brown hair and brown eyes, though she was blind in one eye and had previously suffered a hairline fracture to her left arm. She was a graduate of Derby High School where she had been a drum majorette, a detail that would later become significant in the investigation. She had recently been diagnosed with Guillain-Barre syndrome, a rare neurological disorder that causes paralysis, though this didn't dampen her spirits for the vacation ahead.

A Night That Changed Everything

On the night of August 22, Barbara Jean and her sister went to the Country Comfort bar on Pacific Avenue, where a man kept urging Monaco to go out with him, claiming he had a yacht, but she showed no interest. The sisters enjoyed their evening out, as many young tourists do in a beach resort town. They hit the sand during the day and the clubs at night, living the carefree vacation lifestyle.

The following evening would prove to be Barbara Jean's last. She had scheduled a date with a bartender at the popular local bar named Peabody's for the wee hours of the morning, as it was dark when Monaco set out for her date. Monaco was last seen at 1:00 a.m. on August 23, when she left her sister and began walking to Peabody's, where she had prearranged the date. The bar was six blocks away, and Monaco figured she'd simply walk the distance.

She was wearing a long-sleeved yellow shirt, blue jeans, a brown belt and clogs as she set out on what should have been a short walk through the resort area. However, Barbara Jean never arrived at her destination. Witnesses saw Monaco get into a car on Pacific Avenue; the vehicle reportedly contained four or five men. She never arrived for her date and has never been heard from again.

The Investigation Begins

The initial response to Barbara Jean's disappearance was troubling and would later be seen as a critical error. Her sister tried to report her as a missing person later that day, but the police refused to take a report for 48 hours, which was their first mistake. By then Barbara Jean was probably dead, the trail was cooling, and tourists who might have seen something that could help police had left the city, unaware that a girl had vanished.

Pauline and Joseph Monaco rushed to Virginia Beach with photos of their missing daughter, but the police promptly lost them. Despite these early setbacks, those pictures of their pretty brunette eventually made the front page of the local paper and the evening news.

The family's desperation grew as months passed without answers. The family received an anonymous phone call after Barbara Jean went missing, instructing them not to trust the Virginia Beach police. This led Pauline Monaco and her husband, Joseph, to meet with then-Governor Ella T. Grasso, which resulted in the Connecticut State Police getting involved.

The Informant and Missed Opportunities

Eight months after Monaco's disappearance, her family advertised a $10,000 reward for her recovery, dead or alive. "My husband was so upset by the dead or alive part," Pauline Monaco recalled. "He couldn't face reality."

The reward advertisement yielded a response that would provide chilling details but ultimately lead to more frustration. In response to the ad, a man came forward claiming he had witnessed Monaco's rape and murder the night of her disappearance. He told investigators that Monaco's killers had abducted her as she walked along Pacific Avenue, put her in a sedan, drove her to a lakeside cottage near Oceana, Virginia, killed her and dumped her body in a lake.

The informant reportedly passed a polygraph exam, but he ceased cooperating after authorities refused to offer him immunity from prosecution in exchange for his testimony. In April of 1979, an informant came forward with information granted they were provided immunity, but Virginia Beach Commonwealth's Attorney Andre Evans decided to deny this request, and as a result, nothing came of this lead and some view this as a major mistake.

Authorities dragged the lake and found a cinder block with a rope tied to it, but no body was recovered. Ten months after Barbara Jean's disappearance an informant came forward with details about the murder but the prosecutor refused to grant him immunity in exchange for his testimony. That was a critical mistake. The case went cold after that.

A Devastating Turn in 2001

The case would see another tragic development more than two decades later. James L. "Jimbo" Moore Jr. spoke to the police in 2001 and reportedly gave them information he could only have known if he was with Monaco on the night of her disappearance. Jimbo Moore admitted he was with her on the night before she died and gave the police details about her clothing that they'd never released to the public, but only hours after he made his statement, before he could take the polygraph test, he took his own life outside his apartment.

Instead of returning to tell detectives everything he knew, he went home and ran a hose from the exhaust pipe on his truck to the cab, dying on the eve of the 23rd anniversary of Barbara Jean's death. One of the persons of interest killed himself on August 22, 2001, the eve of the 23rd anniversary of her disappearance, just hours after he submitted to a polygraph from Beach police and gave them details about Barbara Jean that had never before been made public, having agreed to return to the police station the next day to tell them everything he knew.

The Family's Enduring Pain

The Monaco family's anguish has persisted for nearly five decades. Barbara Jean's mother, Pauline, became the heart of the search for answers. In 1985, seven years after the disappearance, Pauline Monaco called a newspaper: "My name is Pauline Monaco. I was wondering if the newspaper would consider writing another story about my daughter, Barbara Jean. She disappeared in Virginia Beach seven years ago".

The family structure has been forever altered by this tragedy. Barbara Jean's surviving family includes her sister, Joanne Monaco-Stec; mother, Pauline Monaco; sister, Theresa Maciog; and brother-in-law, John Maciog. In May of 2011, Joseph Monaco, Barbara Jean's father, died at 88 without knowing what happened to his youngest daughter, with the family placing a photo of Barbara Jean in his casket.

Pauline Monaco is 88, she was 47 the last time she saw her daughter, and is still living in Derby, CT where Barbara Jean grew up, with her other daughters, Theresa and Joanne (who was with Barbara Jean at the Beach that week) living nearby. Pauline Monaco already has her marker in the cemetery, which says she was "The mother of Barbara Jean Monaco".

In 2003, the family held a memorial service to mark the 25th anniversary of Barbara Jean's disappearance. "She never had a funeral," said Barbara Jean's sister, Joanne Monaco-Stec of Derby. Instead of a coffin placed by the altar, there was a framed photograph of Monaco, a miniature china angel and a floral wreath with a pink ribbon, reading "Daughter." State police Lt. Douglas Hanahan delivered the eulogy, saying "As Catholics, the main goal of the family has been to find Barbara Jean and bring her home and bury her in sacred ground".

The Investigation Continues

Despite the passage of time, the case remains active. For 40 years Beach police have been fairly certain they know who was with her that night and have tried repeatedly to get that "handful of persons of interest" to tell them what happened to the missing girl. "They're still refusing to talk," sighed Det. Kristy Curtis of the Virginia Beach Police Department's Cold Case unit, noting that although this is almost certainly a homicide, the "BJM case" as they call it, is still categorized as a "long-term missing person" file.

The window for justice may be closing as time takes its toll on potential witnesses and suspects. Another man considered part of the Monaco case died of cancer recently. Earlier this summer, former Virginia Beach Commonwealth's Attorney Andre Evans, who made the decision in April of 1979 not to grant immunity to an informant in return for details about the homicide, died at the age of 85.

People remaining to tell the truth of Monaco's unjust death are dwindling, and this forty-two-year-old cold case has had such demoralizing turns. However, Virginia Beach detectives haven't given up, and they've made a compelling video about the Monaco case, with her case remaining "active" on the Virginia State Police Cold Case list.

Community Remembrance

The case has maintained visibility partly due to the efforts of concerned citizens and journalists who refuse to let Barbara Jean's memory fade. A concerned citizen of Virginia Beach has stood on a street corner every August for years with a sign that says "What happened to Barbara Jean Monaco?" hoping that his consistent reminder will spark someone else's desire to step forward with information. The man with the homemade sign said he'd read stories in the newspaper for years and was outraged that someone got away with murder in his hometown, having been at that busy intersection with that same sign every August for years.

The story of what happened to Barbara Jean almost drew national attention as a representative of "48 Hours" on CBS met with the family one week prior to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, and Maciog reached out to the Oprah Winfrey show in an effort to keep her sister's memory alive, though neither ended up doing a show.

The Enduring Mystery

Today, Barbara Jean Monaco would be 64 if she were alive today, older than her parents when she was killed. It's been forty-two years since Barbara Jean disappeared in Virginia Beach, VA, and to this day, she remains one of the city's biggest true crime stories.

The men who must be in their 40s now know exactly what happened to 18-year-old Barbara Jean in the early hours of the morning of Aug. 23, 1978, when she was last seen as a slim brunette with a toothy smile walking north on Pacific Avenue from the old Aloha Motel on 15th Street toward Peabody's nightclub on 21st. These men know exactly where she went, where she was taken and where she's buried, and they've been living with this dirty little secret for almost 23 years.

The case continues to generate theories and speculation. Police think the men responsible for the murder were probably locals Monaco had met earlier in her vacation. Authorities remark on how unusual it is for so many partners in crime to have stayed silent for so long, as usually someone spills the beans eventually, whether intentionally or not, but this case is unique in that everyone's kept their mouth shut, for the most part.

The Barbara Jean Monaco case represents more than just an unsolved crime; it embodies a family's unending search for closure and a community's refusal to forget. "Pauline Monaco lived for small scraps of information that would break her heart", yet the family has never given up hope for answers. As Pauline Monaco said about her daughter's death: "It will never leave my heart, but I do feel a sense of closure after this" following the memorial service.

Someone knows who killed Barbara Jean Monaco. Several someones. There is no statute of limitations on murder. If you have information about her slaying you know what you should do. Barbara Jean's case serves as a reminder that justice delayed is not necessarily justice denied, and that somewhere, someone holds the key to bringing peace to a family that has waited nearly half a century for answers about what happened to their beloved daughter, sister, and friend during what should have been a simple summer vacation in Virginia Beach.

Sources

• Virginia State Police Cold Case Database - Barbara Jean Monaco
• Barbara Jean Monaco – The Charley Project
• 1765DFVA - Barbara Jean Monaco - Doe Network