Cold Case reopened

KENT COUNTY (NEWSCHANNEL 3) - Investigators in Kent County are taking another look at the case of a girl who went missing nearly three decades ago.

Deanie Peters was in the eighth grade when she vanished from Forest Hills Central Middle School in Ada back in 1981.

Deanie's family says the past 27 years have been frustrating, and they hope a cold case team will bring the answers they've been waiting for, solving the mystery of Deanie's disappearance.

But in order to do that, the cold case team needs those who knew Deanie nearly three decades ago to come forward.

For Mike Waltman, a 33-year veteran teacher at Forest Hills Central Middle School, what happened in 1981 is firmly stamped in his memory. That's because Waltman taught Deanie's very last class before she vanished.

"I often wonder what happened," he said. "Just what happened? Where is Deanie?"

That is the question the Kent Co. Metro Cold Case Team is working to answer. And they plan to start from scratch, going back to the day Deanie disappeared, after telling her mom she was going to the restroom while attending her brother's wrestling practice.

"We have to go back to the middle school and try to reconstruct everybody at that middle school," said Cold Case Sgt. Rob Davis.

Davis and his colleagues are hoping to find leads - anyone who saw something out of the ordinary on that day back in 1981.

And that's the kind of attention Kathy Kingma has wanted for her childhood best friend for much too long.

"If it was me, she wouldn't have given up either," said Kingma. "You go to the ends of the earth for each other."

Anyone who was there that night is asked to contact the Kent Co. Metro Cold Case Team directly. The team is also looking for those who helped organize a donkey basketball event at the highschool that evening.