Randy Lee Sellers

• Missing Since 08/16/1980
• Missing From Visalia, Kentucky
• Classification Non-Family Abduction
• Sex Male
• Race White
• Date of Birth 09/06/1962 (63)
• Age 17 years old
• Height and Weight 5'9, 149 pounds
• Clothing/Jewelry Description A black Led Zeppelin t-shirt, blue jeans and work shoes.
• Distinguishing Characteristics Caucasian male. Brown hair, hazel eyes. Randy has a birthmark on the crown of his head, a scar above his left eye and a surgical scar on his right knee. He has a scar on his left elbow, reportedly from an old fracture. A crooked letter "R" is tattooed on his forearm. Randy wore a beard on his chin at the time of his disappearance. Four of his teeth had apparently not erupted by the time he went missing, and he may have a crown on one tooth.

Details of Disappearance

Randy was picked up by Kenton County Police Department officers on August 15, 1980, the night prior to his disappearance. He had gone to the Kenton County Fair in Independence, Kentucky and consumed whiskey, marijuana and Quaaludes. He got into a fistfight with another individual, and eventually became so inebriated he couldn't stand.

Security at the fair was provided by officers from the Kenton County Police Reserve, and they took him into custody for disorderly conduct and public intoxication. When they realized Randy was a minor, one of them, Robert Wehner, offered to drive him home. One of Wehner's supervisors said that if Randy caused any problems during the ride, he should be taken to jail instead of home.

According to Wehner, as they were driving towards the road where Randy lived with his mother and stepfather in Visalia, Kentucky, Randy struck him and grabbed him around the neck. Wehner called for backup, and Jay Seifried, an officer who had been with the Kenton County Police Department for eight years, arrived. Randy was transferred into Seifried's car, but he refused to point out where his house was.

The two cars pulled over near a railway overpass over the Licking River, about half a mile from Randy's house, and they let him out there. It was sometime between 9:00 and 10:00 p.m. An eyewitness later came forward and said they saw Randy staggering in the road with two police cars parked nearby. He never arrived home that evening and has not been heard from again.

Authorities initially believed Randy had drowned; footprints near the Licking River matched a set of hiking boots owned by one of his relatives, and there were marks indicating someone had slipped and fallen into the water. A search of the river turned up no evidence, however. Investigators now believe the footprints were left by people searching for Randy.

Donald Leroy Evans, a former drifter sentenced to death for the murder of a young child in Mississippi, claimed he picked up Randy along Kentucky Route 177 and drove him to Kincaid Lake State Park in Pendleton County, Kentucky. They drank beer at the park together, then Evans shot Randy in the back of the head and buried his body in a shallow grave at the park.

Evans also claimed he was responsible for additional unsolved cases, including the death of Kimberly Dawn McClaskey, who was 17 years old when she disappeared from Illinois in 1983. Her skeletal remains were found in 1989, but not conclusively identified until 2006. Authorities have searched Kincaid Lake State Park for Randy's body multiple times, but nothing has been located. Evans was never charged in connection with either case. He was murdered on death row in prison in 1999.

Randy's mother and stepfather sued Kenton County over his disappearance, alleging the police had recklessly endangered him by dropping him off alone instead of taking him to jail or to his parents. In 1984, they received a $21,000 settlement.

Both Wehner and Seifried passed polygraphs in his case, but their accounts have always differed from one another in the details, such as exactly what time they dropped him off, which side of the railroad trestle they were on at the time, and just how drunk Randy was.

Seifried had a history of unprofessional behavior, including wrecking police cruisers and flirting with women while on duty. He quit the department a year after after Randy disappeared. For decades, both officers said neither of them hit Randy, but in the mid-2000s, Wehner changed his story and said Seifried had stopped the car behind a store at one point and hit Randy in the face. Both officers are now in their seventies and retired. Seifried lives in Illinois; Wehner still lives in Kentucky.

Investigators have received tips that officers with the Kenton County Police Department were involved in Randy's disappearance. Each time they receive any tips implicating the department, the Kenton County Police ask the Kentucky State Police to investigate it. So far, the state police haven't deemed any of those tips credible. However, two retired law enforcement officers working on the behalf of the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children reviewed Randy's file and think the most obvious suspects are Wehner and Seifried.

Although Randy had been in juvenile detention before and had previously been hospitalized for drug abuse, his life was going better by the time he went missing. He had gotten his GED and hoped to become an ironworker, like his stepfather. He was going to receive an inheritance after his eighteenth birthday, which was a few weeks after he disappeared, and planned to buy a used car with the money.

His only sibling, a brother who was thirteen when Randy disappeared, died by suicide in 1990, jumping from a bridge into the Ohio River. His body was not recovered for four months. Randy's stepfather died in 2023, but his mother is still alive and still hopes for answers in his case. His disappearance remains unsolved.