Barbara Dreher (King of Hearts, Washington DC)

Our card this week is Barbara Dreher, the King of Hearts, from Washington, D.

But after nine days, they really became concerned, they didn't hear from her, no phone calls, nothing along that line.

That's when Barbara's 23-year-old son Anthony called the ex-husband to check in, confirm that she was there and see when she was coming home. But he didn't get the answer he expected.

He said No, I haven't seen her whatsoever.

Right away, Anthony contacted the Metropolitan Police Department to file an official missing persons report. You would think that after that, a full-blown investigation would ensue, but that wasn't what happened.

Now, when missing person reports, especially back then, were filed, basically, all that would happen is that they would take a report, a description, and they would put the missing person's information into a nationwide database. So that if they were stopped somewhere and their name was run through, then it would pop up that they were missing. Now, since she was an adult, and they really didn't have anything beyond the fact that she was missing. There was no other effort put forth at that time to do any investigation. You have a perfect right as an adult to go missing.

Detective Tranum wasn't on Barbara's case back in 1984. But he said that police likely would have at least called nearby hospitals and jails to see if they had anyone who had her name or who matched her description. But, like he said, beyond that, not much else was done. It seems like they just kind of waited things out, thinking maybe she'd left on her own and would come back soon. So that's what Barbara's family did, too. They waited for a whole nother week.

So he followed him, and he saw the man park the car, get out and go into an apartment complex. He had a friend stand by and watch the car. While he went and got the police, who came back, they waited and they confronted the man.

Police confirmed the car was Barbara's and when they looked inside they found her keys, which still had her little blue pepper spray that she carried with her everywhere on it. As if the fact that this man had a missing woman's car and keys wasn't suspicious enough. Listen to what they found when they opened the trunk.

They found a ski mask, they found a rope, and they found gloves.

When police spoke with the guy who was driving the car, who we've been asked to call R.P. he denied knowing Barbara, and he even flat out denied ever driving the car. Local newspapers reported at the time that, since the car had not been reported as stolen, police just kind of dropped it and decided not to arrest RP. In fact, it's not even clear if police impounded Barbara's car and searched it. Detective Traynham thinks it was probably just turned over to the family.

I don't know why they didn't push it, I don't know why they didn't do at least a little bit of follow up on this whatsoever.

Since Detective Traynham wasn't on the case back then, in the early days, the best he can do is speculate about why police just kind of shrugged off this huge lead.

I can kind of surmise that they kind of blew it off because of the fact that he knew or could potentially have known Barbara's ex-husband. And I don't know what kind of dynamics went on there, but obviously they let the ball drop on this one.

Basically, R.P. and Barbara's ex-husband worked together. I have no idea why this made him no longer suspicious, but to them, it must have. And if your blood is starting to simmer, get ready for a full on boil. Because Barbara's family later learned that R.P. the man seen driving Barbara's car, who was toting around a ski mask, rope and gloves, was a convicted murderer.

Now, after that happened, a 16-year-old girl came knocking on the door, so they brought her into the apartment. They showed her his dead body. I guess. Since she couldn't also provide any information about where this person is, they tied her up. Three of the men raped her.

The group of men then set fire to the apartment in an attempt to cover up any evidence they left behind. But their plan didn't work all that well because the four men were soon arrested and charged for the double murder and arson. The court permitted R.P. to plead guilty to second-degree murder in exchange for his testimony against the other three men. Which is how he was already out of prison less than 10 years later. Now, despite the fact that police had literally found a convicted murderer driving a missing woman's car, Barbara's case quickly went cold. Over the following years, Barbara's family was left to mourn the loss of a woman they loved dearly without even an ounce of closure.

I was actually running a program where we were going back and trying to identify as many unsolved cases as possible, and we were putting cases into searchable databases. We were trying to do link analysis, we were looking for cases that had DNA potential because a lot of these cases were only on paper. And there was no way of trying to do any sort of computerized search for suspects or witnesses in common and things like that. And as part of that, I became kind of the clearinghouse for victims of homicides, their families.

After speaking with Anthony, Tranum's interest was piqued and he began working on Barbara's case.

A lot of cold case units are there, trying to close the easy ones just because to raise the stats, that sort of thing. This wasn't going to benefit anybody except the family. I mean, this wasn't going to lead to a stat. Maybe down the road, but nothing quick. But I just knew that this was a murder.

Detective Tranum knew that because of how old the case was, and because of the department's policies. The stuff he was looking for was going to be difficult, if not impossible, to find.

Record storage, especially a hard record, you know, hard copy record storage, costs money. And so what agencies did, like mine, is they came up with a system where after a certain number of years, they would say, you could reasonably expect that we would not need these documents anymore. So they would authorize their destruction, thus opening up more space for other records to come in and they wouldn't have to spend as much money.

Tranum said that just in case someone over in another district had some files tucked away in a back room. He began calling around to see if he could find something. Anything, but it was a lost cause.

So at that point, I also sat down and had a meeting with the family, where my philosophy was. Especially with these older cases, you just be honest with them. I mean, if we screwed up, we screwed up. If we got rid of something. This was a policy back then. Yeah, it was wrong. Yeah, it's causing us problems. Now we're sorry, but let's see what we can do to try to rectify this.

As part of this, Tranum began doing some preliminary research on R.P. And he learned that, aside from the double murder, he allegedly committed another violent crime.

He was actually arrested for kidnapping a woman at a bus stop and raping her.

The charges were later dropped. But for Tranum, this was just piling on more suspicion to a man who was already suspect number one. Tranum told our reporting team that he would have loved to talk with RP all these years. Later. You know, maybe a guilty conscience had been eating away at him and he was itching to get something off his chest. But due to very limited resources and all of the other cases Tranum was working to revive, he hadn't been able to do that. In fact, he didn't even know if R.P. was still alive.

As I found out more and more about the case, I became more and more convinced, of course, that she was murdered and we actually had a suspect. And we could potentially solve it with some of the evidence that was recovered during the follow-up investigation. But when I went to look for the evidence, I went back into the old log books that we used to keep for evidence and property that we put in our stuff in by hand back in the day and there was nothing there.

You heard that, right? All of the evidence recovered from the scene, the rope, ski mask and gloves gone. As sad as it sounds, Tranum said that working with these old cases, it's something that he's seen far too often.

I mean, cops get lazy.

The missing evidence was especially disheartening in Barbara's case, because that was pretty much it. There really wasn't much else to go on.

Those were the items that I was trying to find, because if we could find those items, and, you know, test them for DNA. If we got Mr. Dreher's DNA on those items, especially with the suspect's DNA on the items, that would be pretty good evidence that he was somehow involved.

But those weren't the only items the department had lost. Barbara's diary and other personal items, which were taken as part of the initial investigation, had also disappeared from police custody before moving on to other cases. Detective Tranum got a blood sample from Anthony and he put it into Namus so it could be compared to any unidentified remains entered into the database. Obviously, Anthony was gutted to learn that everything from his mom's case, from the files to the evidence were gone.

I just remember him, disbelief and anger on his part, which he still has today. I just remember, you know, the family being dissatisfied with the way the entire thing was handled. And rightfully so. The thing about it is is, I have one thing about working these older cases is it makes you realize you kind of think, okay, you know, it's been 20 or 30 years. You know, time heals everything, right? But when you talk to the next of kin a lot of times, it's like, it just happened yesterday and you just see all the old emotions come up and it's just so raw.

Even though the evidence and the original case file can never be recovered in Barbara's case. Detective Tranum did what he could to ensure another family would never have to go through the same thing.

Part of what I was doing is identifying problems that we've had with our investigative process over the years that caused cases like this to happen. And make recommendations so that they don't happen again. So in that part, it's kind of satisfying. Like one of the things that we did was we were part of the movement to pass laws that mandated that our files be maintained longer than they were. And so that was an outcome of stuff like this. So, even though you want to say it was frustrating that this happened, we at least turned it around and also tried to make something positive out of it by learning a lesson from what we had done wrong.

After Detective Tranum revisited the case in 2007, things went cold again. Tranum retired in 2010, heartbroken that Barbara's case remained unsolved and that few seemed to care. The radio silence continued for years, until 2018. In the spring, when Anthony and his family received some news that had them hopeful. For the very first time in a long time. According to The Washington Post, a construction crew working at an apartment building on the southeast side of D..C. unearthed skeletal human remains in a crawlspace.

I think that the primary focus would have and should have been on this RP guy simply because of the facts of the case and his background.

That's something Traynham still can't wrap his mind around how officers back in 1984 just let him go. But as good of a suspect as R.P. seems, Traynham said there are plenty of other scenarios where he wasn't involved in Barbara's murder.

Maybe somebody else killed her and he just came across her car. That's an alternative theory. I mean, we're thinking that he's a killer because, of course, his background, but maybe he got the car from somebody else.

Traynham knows that Barbara's case was far from a priority for MPD when he was there, and he suspects nothing has changed. But he's hopeful that one day the right tip will come in, the stars will align. And finally, after all these years, Barbara's family will know what happened to her.

I shoot a lot of detectives to get really possessive of their cases and they kind of feel like they don't want anybody to solve it but them. So they kind of are secretive about their case. File. I would love for anybody to come across any of these cases, any of my old cases, shoot, I don't have any ego there. Solve that thing. A lot of cases that you have, you look back on and you realize, man, if I had just done this, or if I had just known that, I could have probably solved this thing.

It's been nearly 40 years since Barbara disappeared, and not only is her family still waiting for justice, they're still waiting for the closure of knowing what happened to her. No one should have to live with that weight on their shoulders. So if you know anything, call the Metropolitan Police Department at 202-727-9099. You can request to remain anonymous, or you can text 504-11 to submit an anonymous tip. If you provide information leading to an arrest and conviction, you could be eligible for a reward of up to $25,000..