The family and friends of Kimberly McAndrew are still searching for answers 25 years after her disappearance.
As they mark the anniversary, they hope the passage of time will encourage someone to come forward with new information.
“Depending on how you look at it, you know, it’s gone by so fast, yet it’s been a lifetime as well,” says McAndrew’s sister, Megan Adams.
McAndrew hasn’t been seen or heard from since she left work in Halifax on Aug. 12, 1989. The body of the 19-year-old woman has never been found and her bank account has never been touched.
“Honestly, her clocking out early at 4:20 on Aug. 12 from Canadian Tire on Quinpool Road was really the last thing we know for sure that Kimberly did,” says Adams. “There have been a lot of theories and conjecture.”
Whatever happened to Kimberly, Adams says she and her family believe it must have been quick.
“It’s really a mystery as to what could have happened because it was a sunny, summer day.”
McAndrew’s father Cyril retired from the RCMP the same month she disappeared. Adams says he spent the rest of his life trying to figure out what happened to his daughter, until he passed away ten years ago.
“He just devoted his whole life, you know, every day,” she says.
Investigators have followed up on tips over the years, but an arrest has never been made.
Police spent days scouring Halifax’s Fleming Park in the fall of 1995, after receiving a tip from an inmate that McAndrew’s remains could be found there.
A well in nearby Point Pleasant Park was searched the following spring and investigators conducted an extensive search of a property in Shad Bay, N.S. in the spring of 2013.
The property is owned by the brother of Andrew Paul Johnson, who has long been considered a suspect in McAndrew’s disappearance. Johnson is currently in prison in British Columbia and is a person of interest in several Halifax-area homicides, according to Parole Board documents.
“We do tend to receive tips and various tidbits of information on anniversary dates,” says Halifax Regional Police Const. Pierre Bourdages. “We do follow up with them.”
The case is also part of Nova Scotia’s Rewards for Major Unsolved Crimes Program, which offers up to $150,000 for information that leads to an arrest and conviction in certain cases.
Adams says her family would be thrilled if someone was rewarded for sharing information that leads to an arrest in her sister’s disappearance.
“I think, as we all get older, we understand what’s important in life, and the most important thing is family. I’m just hoping that that will lead someone to reach out for the first time, or reach out again.”
With files from CTV Atlantic's Jacqueliner Foster
