Debra Jean Cole

• Missing Since 08/29/1981
• Missing From Lebanon, Indiana
• Classification Non-Family Abduction
• Sex Female
• Race White
• Date of Birth 03/29/1969 (56)
• Age 12 years old
• Height and Weight 5'3, 115 pounds
• Clothing/Jewelry Description Blue jeans and blue sneakers.
• Medical Conditions Debra was reportedly pregnant at the time of her disappearance, but the rumor has never been confirmed.
• Distinguishing Characteristics Caucasian female. Dark blonde hair, hazel eyes. Debra has a birthmark the size of a half-dollar on her ankle. Her family nickname is Jeanie (sometimes spelled "Ginny").

Details of Disappearance

Debra was last seen at her family's residence in Lebanon, Indiana on August 29, 1981 at approximately 11:00 a.m. She was allegedly with her mother's live-in boyfriend, Omer "Steve" Beebout. Debra disappeared during the day and has never been heard from again. She left all of her personal belongings inside her home. Her mother initially reported her missing on August 31, 1981, two days after her daughter was last seen.

Debra's case was reclassified from a runaway to a non-family abduction with foul play suspected after the homicide of her sister, Frances Annette Cole, in 1983. A photo of her is posted with this case summary. She went by her middle name.

Annette disappeared on October 4 that year, when she was sixteen years old. She was discovered deceased along U.S. 52 seven miles north of Lebanon on October 7, three days later. She had been raped before being shot in the back with a shotgun; the coroner determined that she died the same day she was found. It's not clear where she was during the intervening time period.

Beebout was considered a suspect in Annette's homicide from the onset of the investigation; he was the last person to see her before she disappeared, and the police were suspicious because he knew the color of the underpants she'd been wearing that day. He also became the prime suspect in Debra's 1981 disappearance, but he was never charged in connection with either sister.

About two years after Annette's murder, her mother and Beebout broke up; she later said she left him after she began to suspect he was involved in Debra's disappearance and Annette's murder. Beebout died of a heart attack in April 1989, at age forty-nine. Authorities matched semen and other fluid samples taken from Annette's remains to his DNA in early 1999.

Investigators believe the evidence proves that Beebout was responsible for Frances's death; it is also theorized that he may have been involved in Debra's disappearance. Her case remains unsolved.