Barbara Jean Monaco

Monaco and her older sister lived in Derby, Connecticut in 1978. They took a vacation trip with two of the sister's friends to Virginia Beach, Virginia on August 20, the day after Monaco's eighteenth birthday, and registered at the Aloha Motel on 15th Street. They planned to stay in Virginia for a week.

She and her sister went to the Country Comfort bar on Pacific Avenue on the night of August 22. An unidentified man there kept urging Monaco to go out with him, and told her he had a yacht, but she was uninterested; in fact, she was bothered by the man and wanted to leave. Her sister described the man was about thirty years old and over six feet tall with a heavy build, blond hair and tanned skin. He wore blue jeans and a plaid shirt.

Monaco was last seen at 1:00 a.m. August 23, when she left her sister and began walking to a bar called Peabody's, where she had a prearranged a date with a bartender. The bar was six blocks away. 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.

Her sister tried to report her as a missing person later that day, but the police refused to take a report for 48 hours. The bartender she was going to see was later cleared as a suspect.

Eight months after Monaco's disappearance, her family advertised a $10,000 reward for her recovery, dead or alive. 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.

Authorities dragged the lake and found a cinder block with a rope tied to it, but they didn't find Monaco's remains. 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.

Other witnesses and suspects have been interviewed over the years. 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. He agreed to take a polygraph to verify the authenticity of his story, but only hours after he made his statement, before he could take the test, took his own life outside his apartment.

No arrests have been made in connection with Monaco's case. Her family held a memorial service for her in 2003, on the twenty-fifth anniversary of her disappearance.

Monaco is a graduate of Derby High School; she was a drum majorette there and studied business. While she was in Virginia she found out she had been hired for her first job. Foul play is suspected in her disappearance due to the circumstances involved.