In the quiet town of Zanesville, Ohio, Thirty-nine years ago, Barbara Frame, a 38-year-old mother of three vanished. It was a chilly January evening in 1985 when Barbara vanished without a trace, leaving behind her children and a lifetime of unanswered questions.
Described as a sociable and friendly woman, Barbara was navigating the aftermath of a recent divorce, striving to rebuild her life for herself and her children. Just six weeks prior to her disappearance, she had finalized her divorce from her husband of four-and-a-half years and had settled into a new home with her children.
On Jan. 30, 1985, Frame was running late for work, which Huber said was unlike her. She did not have time to get her kids ready for school, so they ended up missing their bus and stayed home.
While Frame was at work, a piece of ice fell off the roof of the home next to hers and crashed through a bedroom window, Huber said. Frame arrived home from work around 4:30 p.m., when Huber told her about the broken window. Frame planned to tell her landlord about the window later that evening and began to make dinner when there was a knock at the door. She started to make dinner then her ex-husband came over. Frame’s ex-husband told her she needed to go to the meeting right then. At about 5 p.m., she grabbed her coat and her purse and told her children she was going to go sign papers at the lawyer’s office, stop at a store to grab an ingredient for dinner. This meeting that her daughter Kathy later discovered never existed. This marked the beginning of a perplexing puzzle that remains unsolved to this day.
The following day, when Barbara failed to show up for work, her daughter Kathy reported her missing. Subsequently, Barbara’s car was discovered abandoned in a parking lot near her workplace, adding to the mystery surrounding her disappearance. Despite extensive efforts by law enforcement and her family, Barbara Frame remained missing.
At the time of her disappearance, Barbara Frame was 5 feet 6, 130 pounds and had brown hair and green eyes. She had a cesarean section scar on her stomach. She was last seen wearing long pants, a coat and tennis shoes. Today she would be 77 years old. Despite the decades that have elapsed since her disappearance, the search for answers continues. The Zanesville Police Department encourages anyone with information regarding Barbara’s disappearance to come forward, offering a glimmer of hope for closure to her family after so many years of uncertainty.