crystaldawn's old post from last year mentioning the 20 year anniversary of Christi Nichols going missing brought to my attention some other anniversaries of Unsolved Mysteries cases that will hit 20 years in 2009. All three of these cases were very memorable and sadly, they still are not solved.

1. March 1st of this year marks the 20th anniversary of the Baskin children being abducted by their grandparents; Marvin and Sandra Maple. On March 1, 1989, Karen Hornsby, a court appointed guardian, drove to the Maples house in Murfreesboro, Tennessee to remind them of a court hearing that was to take place in the coming weeks which would have returned full custody of Christi and Bobby back to their parents. When Hornsby arrived at the house, she saw a "For Sale" sign in the front yard and discovered that the Maples had fled with the two children. They have not been seen and have successfully avoided police and the FBI ever since.

2. Two weeks after the Baskin children were kidnapped, Tracy Kirkpatrick was stabbed to death in the clothing store where she worked in Frederick, Maryland. She was assigned to close the store and tally up the days receipts on March 15, 1989. Some time in the 15 minutes she was alone before closing time, she was stabbed by "Don" in the storage room. Her body was discovered 2 hours later. This was a case that should have been solved within a year at the latest. Yet here we are 2 decades later and Tracy's family is nowhere closer now to having the killer brought to justice than they were then.

3. Two months after Tracy Kirkpatrick's murder and nearly 3,000 miles away on the other side of Canada, Cindy James went missing. She was last seen alive on May 25, 1989 near her hometown in Richmond, a suburb of Vancouver, British Columbia. She spent the afternoon shopping. She then went and had a makeover before having coffee with a coworker. At 7:58 p.m., she deposited her paycheck at the Bank of Montreal. A man and woman witnessed Cindy walk across the parking lot of the bank 3 minutes later. Cindy never made it home. 2 hours later at 10:00 p.m., Cindy's friends Tom and Agnes Woodcok arrived at her house to spend the night with her because she feared being alone. At 11:00 p.m., they went to the police to report Cindy missing and on the way, spotted her car still parked in the bank parking lot. 2 weeks later on June 8th, Cindy's body was discovered in the yard of an abandoned house in Richmond.

It's hard to believe it's been that long since those 3 tragedies happened. Any other 20 year anniversaries involving Unsolved Mysteries cases that I might have forgotten?

Here are two (so far):

1) The murder of Kaitlyn Arquette. She was shot to death on July 16, 1989. Her mother, author Lois Duncan, wrote about the case in the book Who Killed My Daughter?

2) The murder of Dan Short. In the early hours of October 6, 1989, Short was abducted from his home in Missouri and taken to the bank where he presided. He was forced give money to his abductors. A short while later, they tied him to a chair and threw him in a river. Short's body was discovered five days later.

Current status on the former: Unsolved.

Current status on the latter: Solved. Joe Agofsky and his brother Shannon were identified as the both the bank robbers and Dan Short's killers. Both are incarcerated. Shannon Agofsky is now on death row for killing an inmate.

April 20th will be the 20th anniversary of Patricia Meehan's disappearance from Circle, MT, and March 9th marks 20 years after Kevin Hughes was gunned down in Nashville, TN.

Tomorrow is the 20th anniversary of the murder of Michael Francke, the director of the Oregon Department of Corrections. He was stabbed to death on January 17, 1989. Despite claims that Francke's death resulted from a botched robbery, it is contended that the real reason he was murdered was because he was on the verge of exposing corruption in the prison system.

Tracy Wolford-Bunn was found dead in her car on April 1, 1989. Her boyfriend was a suspect but was later cleared. Eighteen years after the fact, the police found a match with DNA but the suspect had died, so they ended up closing her case. It's so sad that Tracy's family never found out who killed her.

Tracy Wolford-Bunn was found dead in her car on April 1, 1989. Her boyfriend was a suspect but was later cleared. Eighteen years after the fact, the police found a match with DNA but the suspect had died, so they ended up closing her case. It's so sad that Tracy's family never found out who killed her.

The deceased suspect's name was Freddy McKinley. Through the Combined DNA Index System (CODIS), his DNA matched the DNA found at the crime scene.