Cleaning His New Apartment: The Disappearance of Kristine Kupka

Author

Benjamin Hayes

Publication Date

June 6, 2026

Kristine Kupka was 28 years old, an honors philosophy student at Baruch College in Manhattan carrying a 3.97 grade point average, when she vanished from Brooklyn on October 24, 1998. She was five months pregnant at the time, carrying the child of a married former professor who had reportedly begged her to have an abortion. She had already decided she would raise the baby alone and pursue law school afterward, with plans to become a civil rights attorney. On the day she disappeared, she left a voicemail for her sister saying she was going to help that same professor clean his new apartment. She has never been seen since, and the man she went to meet that day has never been charged with anything connected to her disappearance.

An Ambitious Student

Kristine was, by every account, an unusually driven and intelligent young woman. She carried a near-perfect 3.97 GPA at Baruch College, had personally founded the school's philosophy club, and managed to work full time while still carrying a demanding academic course load. She had already mapped out a future for herself well beyond her current studies, intending to attend law school and build a career specifically as a civil rights attorney, the kind of concrete, purposeful ambition that made her eventual disappearance all the more jarring to everyone who knew her.

Her Former Chemistry Professor

Kristine's relationship with Darshanand Persaud, known to those around him as Rudy, began after she completed a chemistry course he taught at Baruch College. Persaud initially told her he was single, or recently out of a relationship, though this was not true. He was, in fact, married, and came from a strict Hindu family of Guyanese background, with a father who worked as a priest. The relationship between Kristine and Persaud remained relatively casual by most accounts, with the two of them seeing each other infrequently given their respective busy schedules, right up until Kristine discovered she was pregnant.

An Unwanted Pregnancy

The pregnancy was, by all accounts, unplanned, and Persaud's reaction to it was anything but supportive. He reportedly begged Kristine to have an abortion, a request she refused. Rather than end the pregnancy, Kristine made clear to those close to her that she intended to raise the child entirely on her own, and she planned specifically to list Persaud as the father on the child's birth certificate regardless of his wishes, a decision that would have created an undeniable, permanent legal record connecting him to her and to the baby she was carrying.

October 24, 1998

On the afternoon of October 24, 1998, Kristine left her home in the Westminster Avenue area of Brooklyn's Flatbush neighborhood at approximately 12:30 p.m. Before leaving, she left a voicemail for her sister, Kathy, explaining that she was going to help Rudy clean his new apartment in Queens. She left without a coat, without any significant personal belongings, and without much money on her, all details consistent with someone expecting to be gone only a short while rather than planning any kind of extended trip or intentional disappearance. She was never heard from again.

One Interview, Then Silence

In the investigation that followed, police questioned Darshanand Persaud exactly once. Investigators later noted that he had no verifiable alibi for the specific time Kristine vanished, and that he appeared evasive at certain points during that single interview, even as he was described as generally cooperative in tone. Following that initial interview, Persaud retained an attorney and declined to speak with investigators any further. He has never been formally arrested or charged with any crime connected to Kristine's disappearance, and detectives have been candid over the years that they possess motive but little in the way of direct physical evidence tying him definitively to whatever happened to her.

A Cousin's Shop That Wouldn't Open Its Doors

For years, investigators harbored a specific, unconfirmed tip suggesting that Kristine's remains might be buried beneath a plumbing supply shop in Jamaica, Queens, a property connected to one of Persaud's relatives. The person managing that property at the time, also a relative of Persaud's, refused to allow police to search the premises, leaving the tip essentially unactionable for over a decade. It was not until the business finally changed hands, moving out of the family's control entirely, that authorities were finally able to gain access and pursue a proper search of the location.

Digging Up the Basement

That search finally took place in 2010, twelve years after Kristine disappeared. Investigators brought in a cadaver-sniffing dog, which alerted specifically to one section of the basement's concrete floor that did not match the surrounding material, a strong indication that the floor had been disturbed and repoured at some point after the original construction. When authorities excavated that section, they recovered bone fragments, but subsequent examination determined the bones were definitely not human, closing off what had briefly looked like the case's long-awaited resolution. Investigators have said they continue to believe Kristine was either buried in that basement at some point before being moved elsewhere, or killed there directly and relocated afterward, though neither theory has ever been confirmed by any physical evidence recovered since.

A New Life in Tampa

In the years since Kristine's disappearance, Darshanand Persaud relocated away from New York entirely and built a new professional life for himself as a practicing dentist in Tampa, Florida, where he continues to see patients today. It is a detail that has struck many following the case as almost unbearably ordinary, a man who remains the central and, in the eyes of Kristine's own family, only real suspect in a young pregnant woman's disappearance, continuing to run a dental practice in another state for more than two decades while never facing formal charges of any kind.

Still Unsolved

Kristine Kupka's family eventually hired a private investigator to pursue the case independently, and that investigator has stated a belief that Persaud was directly involved in whatever happened to her. Persaud himself has continued to maintain his innocence throughout. With no body ever recovered, no confession ever obtained, and no physical evidence strong enough to support formal charges, the case remains exactly where it has sat for more than a quarter century: open, unresolved, and centered entirely on a single man who has never had to answer for it in any courtroom.

What makes the case especially painful for Kristine's family is how much of her own future had already been mapped out in the weeks before she disappeared. She was not a young woman drifting without direction. She had a graduate school plan, a specific career goal, and a clear intention to raise her child regardless of what the father wanted, a level of resolve that friends and family have pointed to repeatedly as evidence she would never have simply walked away from her own life. More than a quarter century later, that resolve, and everything she had planned to build with it, remains the clearest unanswered question in a case that has never produced a body, a confession, or a trial.

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