[Amy]

Heidi Lynn Seeman, b. November 16, 1978, of San Antonio, Texas disappeared on Saturday, August 4, 1990. The daughter of Mrs. Theresa Seeman and Air Force Senior Master Sergeant Curt Seeman, Heidi was abducted just before noon as she was walked along Stahl Road to her home after spending the night with a friend.

Her friend walked part of the way with her and later told authorities she noticed the same red car drive past them several times as they walked. After parting ways, the friend looked back a few moments later and saw that Heidi was gone.

A massive twenty-one day search ensued statewide, involving over 8,000 civilians, military personnel, and first-response workers aided by tracking dogs, helicopters, vehicles and horses.

The search encompassed over 1,200 miles and according to the FBI, was one of the largest and most expensive searches in US history. Never before had so many people been involved in a search for one child over such an extended period of time.

Over 50 miles of yellow ribbon was displayed throughout San Antonio and its environs as a symbol of the search. On August 11, 1990, then-mayor Lila Cockrell declared "Find Heidi Day," an event in which over 300,000 citizens of San Antonio came together to search for the missing girl.

Despite these efforts, Heidi would not be located alive. On August 25, 1990, her decomposed body was found stuffed into two duct-tape-bound trash bags along a rural road near Wimberley, Texas, 60 miles north of San Antonio.

Maj. Robert Eric Duncan, a former superior of SMSgt. Seeman at Randolph Air Force Base, was the prime suspect in Heidi's abduction and murder. Armed with a warrant, agents from the Air Force Office of Special Investigations (OSI), searched Maj. Duncan's home in Converse and collected a number of items that were taken into evidence.

In July 1996, an Article 32 proceeding, the military equivalent of a grand jury, was held to determine whether sufficient evidence existed to bring charges against Duncan. In September, the proceeding ruled that there was not enough evidence available to prosecute Duncan.

Duncan helped lead the search efforts for Heidi in the days following her disappearance. A co-worker told investigators Duncan had once threatened to get even with Heidi's father because of a dispute at work. But Duncan was never charged and has repeatedly denied having anything to do with the murder.

Bexar County District Attorney Nico LaHood says the Texas Rangers are now in charge of Heidi's case, but there've been few developments in recent years.

Heidi's friend did help investigators come up with a composite drawing of a man she says drove past her and Heidi three times the morning of the abduction, in a red car.

The case eventually went cold remains unsolved to this day.

[Jere]

awful way to lose a child..
good post amy.

[Susan]

This sort is the hardest to solve. A perpetrator that is unrelated/unknown to the victim. Someone who took a chance when he/she saw her walking alone that day. More than likely some paedophile. He could have driven there from anywhere. I'd guess the only hope of this case ever being solved would be either a confession or someone who knows who it was finally coming forward, or some kind of progression in forensics in the future.

I could be wrong though on this case. Was there any evidence of sexual assault? What was the specific evidence that pointed towards Duncan being the perp?

[Amy]

Originally Posted by slyksleevemuckyey ↗

This sort is the hardest to solve. A perpetrator that is unrelated/unknown to the victim. Someone who took a chance when he/she saw her walking alone that day. More than likely some paedophile. He could have driven there from anywhere. I'd guess the only hope of this case ever being solved would be either a confession or someone who knows who it was finally coming forward, or some kind of progression in forensics in the future.

I could be wrong though on this case. Was there any evidence of sexual assault? What was the specific evidence that pointed towards Duncan being the perp?

The cops that worked the case are positive it was Duncan. Here is an article. Ill c/p as I know some dislike links.

http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/loc...ity-633808.php

Former Hays County Sheriff Paul Hastings doesn't dwell on his 38 years in law enforcement - 14 years into retirement, the soft-spoken 73-year-old would rather tend to his parched plot of Hill Country oaks and sun-baked pasture just outside Dripping Springs.

A widower, his only companions are 11 goats and a one-eyed mule named Nick.

Hastings' long career yielded few notable regrets, but occasionally a nightmarish pang rouses him from sleep, filling his weary brown eyes with unexpected tears.
Her name is Heidi Lynn Seeman.

Twenty years ago this week, her decomposed body was found stuffed into two duct-tape-bound trash bags along a rural road near Wimberley. But one of the most prominent kidnappings and slayings in San Antonio history feels like it happened yesterday to investigators like Hastings.

"The day I give up on this case is the day I'm not worth anything," he said, his eyes flashing sudden despair. "The first time I sit down and say, 'Oh the heck with it,' then there's something wrong with me."

Hastings is not alone. A handful of investigators say they remain determined, even optimistic, about finding Heidi's killer.

Heidi was 11 when she was abducted Aug. 4, 1990, as she walked along Stahl Road just a few blocks from home in the High Country II subdivision on the Northeast Side. For the next 21 days a massive search involving thousands of San Antonians scoured the city and countryside.

The fear that gripped San Antonio was heightened when another child, Erica Marie Botello, 7, went missing from her West Side apartment complex Aug. 23. Her body was found in a storm drain less than a mile from her home on Aug. 26, the day after a rancher found Heidi's remains and called the Sheriff's Office.

Nobody ever has been charged in either slaying.

"It didn't just affect parents, it affected whole families," said Vanessa L. Tate-Winn, 41, a volunteer searcher who later became president of the Heidi Search Center here. "It put that 'what if?' question in everybody's mind. A lot of the children during that time period are parents now, and they still haven't gotten over it."

Suspects were briefly considered in the Botello slaying but those cases went nowhere - and never generated the years of controversy that the Seeman investigation produced. San Antonio police and the Texas Rangers again are actively investigating Heidi's death and have asked for help from the FBI, officials said.

"Over the last several months, we have had some new developments in the case and are actively working them," said Elizabeth Ann Greiner, an SAPD cold case detective. She declined to elaborate but said the case's longtime suspects - former Air Force Maj. Robert Eric Duncan and Jerry Nabor, who served time in prison on a drug conviction - still are considered viable targets of the probe.

The San Antonio Express-News was unable to contact Nabor.

A fervent debate over each man's alleged guilt still rages behind the scenes among longtime investigators, many of whom no longer are actively involved in the case.

That neither Duncan nor Nabor ever was tried on a murder charge has fueled long-simmering anger and conspiracy theories. It became "very personal for a lot of investigators," explained Trampas Gooding, a Texas Ranger now on the hunt.

"It takes a special kind of person to kidnap and molest a child" but cold case investigators are intent on keeping an open mind, Gooding said.

"The case is still absolutely solvable," said Jimmy Holguin, a former lead investigator on the Seeman murder with SAPD who now works as the chief investigator for the Bexar County medical examiner's office. "But knowing who committed a murder and proving it are two different things. In my mind it has been and always will be Jerry Nabor."
Holguin's certainty is shared by Hastings.

"She was kidnapped by Maj. Duncan," he said, and noted a previously publicized theory, repeated in an Air Force investigation file, that Duncan was seeking revenge against Heidi's father, Curt Seeman, because he blamed him for getting Duncan transferred from Randolph AFB, where he worked as a psychologist.

While Holguin declined to comment on specifics, Hastings pointed to a series of phone calls Duncan made to his wife, Patty Hastings, a reporter at a Dripping Springs newspaper, in the weeks after Seeman's disappearance.

He provided a statement signed by Patty Hastings, who died in 2001, describing how Duncan, then a leader of the search effort, called to ask about the investigation, if FBI agents were in the area and to discuss strange dreams he was having.

"He again began telling me about his dreams, and I again cut him short," Patty Hastings wrote, noting that her editor had begun calling Duncan a "fruitcake." "This line of conversation made me very uncomfortable."

Hastings doesn't know if Duncan was trying to draw attention to himself, but the phone calls were among the first things that made him a suspect, he said.

In 1996, Curt Seeman filed a murder complaint against Duncan with the U.S. military, but the resulting Article 32 proceeding, the equivalent of a grand jury, found insufficient evidence to charge him.

Today, Heidi's father follows the investigation but has grown less hopeful over the past two decades, though the optimism of his wife, Theresa, rarely wavers.

"It pretty much looks to me like Duncan is guilty," he said. "Unfortunately there isn't that one piece of physical evidence that can be attached to anybody. Unless somebody comes forward and says 'I did it,' I'm not sure it can be resolved."
Thinking about Duncan momentarily turns the mild-mannered Hastings into the tough Houston cop he once was.

"Have you ever seen a case like this before?" he asked incredulously. "We have a situation where we know who did it, we know what a horrible crime it was and yet nothing has happened."

Over the years, Duncan has claimed to be working on a novel about the case. Reached by phone at his home in Virginia this week, he declined to comment but offered a tantalizing clue about his book, one that seemed to sum up the Seeman case itself.

"It's a work in progress," he said.

[Susan]

Originally Posted by Amy ↗

The cops that worked the case are positive it was Duncan. Here is an article. Ill c/p as I know some dislike links.

http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/loc...ity-633808.php

thank you

[Amy]

Originally Posted by slyksleevemuckyey ↗

thank you

Most welcome. :)

I had the same thoughts as you initially. Funny how a killer can be so close to justice, yet so far away.

[Cancun78]

When i was 12 i was mowing when i noticed a truck go around the block several times. The last time it stopped in front of me and the guy in the passenger seat locked gaze with me for what seemed like a good minute and i was basically froze.

Then the sound of my papaws tractor caught my attention and i looked behinde me, saw my papaw, then looked back at the one dude, whos gaze was just above me, lookin at my papaw too. He then made eye contact back to me and then shut the truck door, which i hadnt even noticed was even open. They drove off and i never saw that truck again.

A girl i went to school with ended up assaulted and murdered and although she knew the guy who killed her, i think it was the same guy. He was rumored to have his brother help him but idk if that is true but if it is then that would explain the driver of the truck (who during the entire time had his head turned away so all i could see was the top of his ball cap).

I'll never know. i ran to my mom who shoo'd me the fuck out as she had friends over and they had a deal goin down, yapping and shit.

That bit about that car passing back and forth...ugh. Gotta watch pple

[vagabond]

Great post- my old stomping grounds as a kid.

[rr081008]

I live in S.A. and remember this story. Its still sad.

[gringo1965]

San Antonio, Texas is just inside the ring of probability. 90% certain she was abducted by an illegal immigrant. Being that she was in San Antonio, close enough to the border, I know some sick fuck from Mexico put her in trash bags. I hope there is a punishing God.