Angela “Angie” Hammond: Missouri Woman Abducted While Using Payphone
On the other end of the line, her fiancé heard her screams and the haunting words of her kidnapper saying, “I didn’t need to use the phone anyway,” before the line went dead
The Chilling Abduction of Angie Hammond
On the night of April 4th, 1991, 20-year-old Angie Hammond spoke to her fiancé on a payphone, telling him that she was too tired to go out and that she just wanted to go home and take a bath.
During the course of this conversation, a suspicious man caught Angie’s attention as he circled around the block multiple times in his pickup truck.
Eventually, the stranger pulled up beside her, got out of his vehicle and began shining a flashlight at the ground around it, as if looking for something. Meanwhile, Angie continued to talk to Rob on the phone, describing the man’s strange behavior and becoming increasingly unsettled by his presence.
Just minutes later, Rob would hear Angie scream and the chilling words of her abductor saying: “I didn’t need to use the phone anyway.” Then the line went dead.
Who kidnapped Angie Hammond?
Angela Marie Hammond
Angela “Angie” Marie Hammond was born on February 9th, 1971, in Kansas City, Kansas, the oldest child of parents Christopher and Marsha. She had one sibling, a younger brother named Loren.
In 1975, the Hammond family relocated to small town Clinton, Missouri, approximately 80 miles away. Marsha’s parents lived there and were able to provide financial support, as well as childcare, for the young couple.
Growing up, Angie was a happy, outgoing, and energetic girl. Her personality remained essentially the same as she grew older.
“She was just a fun-loving girl, who loved to be around people,” said Christopher.
As an adult, she began attending Central Missouri State University. Her boyfriend of one year, 18-year-old Rob Shafer, proposed to Angie in January 1991, after learning that she was pregnant.
By all accounts, the couple was excited about the prospect of having a baby together and getting married. Those who knew Rob and Angie described their relationship as happy and loving.
They moved into a mobile home together, and Rob planned to join the military later that year.
Haunting Final Conversation
On April 4th, 1991, Angie and Rob went to a barbecue at her mother’s home and enjoyed themselves. Afterwards, Angie dropped off Rob at his family’s house, as he had promised to babysit his brother until his mother returned home from work.
Angie departed and spent the next few hours with her friend Kyla. Around 11:15 p.m., she called Rob from a payphone in the Food Barn parking lot, seven blocks away from the Shafer family home.
She told her fiancé that she felt too tired to go out later and that she was going home to take a bath instead. There was no telephone in their residence and it wasn’t uncommon for them to communicate by payphone at times like this.
Stranger Lurking
As they spoke, Angie noticed that a green Ford pickup truck kept circling around the block. Eventually, the driver—a person that Angie would describe as a “filthy, bearded man” with a mustache, wearing a dark baseball cap and overalls—pulled up next to her.
The pickup truck had a distinctive detail on its rear windshield—a large mural of a fish jumping out of the water.
The man exited his vehicle and immediately took out a flashlight and started looking at the ground around his truck. Confused by his behavior, Angie asked the stranger if he needed to use the phone. He told her no, but continued to stand there.
By now, Angie was becoming nervous. If he didn’t need to use the phone, and he couldn’t go inside the grocery store since it was closed, then why was he lingering there? And why had he circled around the block multiple times before stopping?
Chillingly, the next thing Rob heard was the sound of Angie screaming and the voice of a man saying: “I didn’t need to use the phone anyway,” before the call abruptly ended.
Rob ran out of his parents’ house, got into his car and sped off, hoping to help Angie. On the way there, he passed a truck that looked like the one described by her, heading in the opposite direction, and heard his fiancée call out his name.
Rob threw his car sharply in reverse, unintentionally damaging the transmission in the process, and took off in frantic pursuit of Angie and her captor. He followed them for two miles before his transmission finally gave out as he made a turn. He could only watch helplessly as the truck disappeared into the distance.
He managed to see an “XY” on the license plate, but the rest of the number was obscured by dirt.
The Search for Angie Hammond
The Missouri State Highway Patrol conducted an extensive search, on land and by air, for Angie Hammond. They also checked hundreds of late 1960s to early ’70s green Ford pickup trucks, but were unable to find the one belonging to her abductor.
It was confirmed that the transmission of Rob’s car had, in fact, failed. Yet the police were initially skeptical of his version of events. However, Rob cooperated with the investigation from the beginning and also passed a polygraph examination.
Within days, witnesses came forward to report having seen a strange man in a green truck hanging around the parking lot that night, corroborating Rob’s story. Additionally, the Hammond family’s support of Rob and belief in his innocence never wavered.
Rob was soon cleared of any suspicion.
Clinton Police Chief Bob Pattison:
“We’re staying right on it. We’re still looking for the vehicle, for the suspect, and for Angela. There’s been nothing really solid, though, in this four-week time span.”
Sightings
The police continued to look for Angie, but had no luck locating her. All told, dozens of investigators followed hundreds of leads, to no avail. They couldn’t find any sign of the missing pregnant woman or the distinctive truck she was last seen in.
There were a number of reported sightings of her—from multiple states and even Canada—but none could be substantiated. Perhaps the most interesting of these sightings was the one that took place in Canada in September 1991.
The witness, a man named Russell Smith, allegedly spotted Angie in Selkirk, Manitoba, Canada. He saw her leave a drugstore and get into a green truck with a fish mural on the rear windshield.
Smith was reminded of the encounter when he spotted a missing persons poster with her face on it a month later.
“I know I saw that girl. I know that for a fact. I may not remember someone’s name, but I never forget a face,” Smith said.
Although the lead initially seemed promising and investigators didn’t necessarily doubt Smith’s sincerity, they were never able to confirm his story.
With no solid leads to pursue, Angie’s case soon grew cold. Clinton Police Detective Damon Parsons stated six months after Angie’s disappearance:
“There’s someone out there who has information, but they just may not realize it. Until they come forward or until she’s found, there really is not much more we could do.”
Possible Connection to Other Cases?
Law enforcement speculated that Angie’s abduction might be connected with two other cases regarding women who had disappeared within a 100-mile radius of Clinton.
The first case involved 42-year-old Trudy Darby, who vanished in Macks Creek, Missouri, on January 19th, 1991. That evening, she called her son to report a suspicious man lurking in the parking lot of the convenience store where she worked. Her son arrived just minutes later to find both his mother and the man missing.
The lifeless body of Trudy was found two days later, on a riverbank 10 miles away from the store. She had been raped and shot in the head. Her half-brothers, Marvin Chaney and Jesse Rush, were later convicted of the crime.
The other case that police felt might be relevant was the disappearance of 30-year-old Cheryl Kenney, also a convenience store worker, from Nevada, Missouri, which was 70 miles away from Macks Creek. After locking up for the night on February 27th, 1991, Cheryl vanished from the parking lot. She has never been found and her case remains unsolved.
Suspects
Over the years, investigators have pursued several suspects, but none were ever definitively connected to Angie Hammond’s case.
Marvin Chaney and Jesse Rush
In a series of letters that Jesse Rush sent to a fellow inmate he’d befriended while awaiting trial for the murder of Trudy Darby, he alluded to being responsible, along with his stepbrother, for several other unsolved rapes and murders.
While some believed that Chaney and Rush had likely abducted and murdered Angie and Cheryl as well, the two men have never admitted to any culpability in either case and no solid evidence tying them to the disappearances of these two women has ever been discovered.
Kenneth McDuff
Serial killer Kenneth McDuff has also come up as a person of interest. McDuff, whose killing spree spanned from 1966–1992, was known to target mostly young women and in 1992, he was living in Kansas City, Missouri (approximately 76 miles away from Clinton).
Prior to his execution in 1998, McDuff admitted to committing many murders, but denied any involvement in Angie’s abduction. As with Chaney and Rush, no evidence connecting him to her case has been found.
Larry Hall
Similarly, suspected serial killer Larry Hall has been put forward as a suspect. He even bears a resemblance to the description of the man who kidnapped Angie.
However, Hall was known to use a van during his crimes, not a truck. Though he has confessed to killing dozens of women across the Midwest (so far only two have been confirmed), he has never claimed responsibility for or been linked to Angie.
2021 Update
On April 4th, 2021—the 30th anniversary of Angie’s kidnapping—the Clinton Police Department announced that they had a new lead to investigate.
A confidential informant reportedly received a “cut-and-paste” letter which read:
“Hello (number redacted) we know who you are (number redacted) People like you deserve what you get We know where your foxy daughter is at She will see us soon Tell (wife’s name) she has our deepest sympathy in her further loss Goodby.”
The letter writer correctly identified the informant’s court-issued number and knew the name of his estranged wife as well. Additionally, the couple had a daughter named Angela, who was living in Clinton at the time. The informant was a key witness in putting an end to a big drug operation.
The letter was postmarked April 4th, 1991—the day of Angie’s kidnapping.
If genuine, the implications of the letter suggest that Angie Hammond might have been the victim of mistaken identity and that the perpetrator had actually intended to abduct another woman.
On the other hand, it seems implausible that the abductor would somehow know that Angie Hammond, a random young woman standing at a payphone, had the same first name as the person they were targeting, but was also somehow unaware that she was the wrong one.
The authorities were also contacted by an anonymous caller claiming to have information on the case. They had knowledge about the letter as well. Police were hopeful that this individual would get in touch again, but they apparently haven’t.
Other Developments
Angie’s family has never given up on finding her.
“I know the statistics aren’t good at this point for finding her, but until something happens, you can’t give up,” said Angie’s mother Marsha. “The hope is always going to be there. I’m trying to prepare myself for the worst and yet trying to hope for the best. I’m taking it one day at a time.”
Marsha developed a friendship with Janis McCall, the mother of Stacy McCall, who mysteriously vanished along with her friend Suzie Streeter and Suzie’s mother Sherrill on June 7th, 1992. The missing women are often referred to as “The Springfield Three.”
“It’s not a bond you want to have. But at least there’s someone else going through this. It was like meeting a long lost friend,” said Janis McCall.
Sadly, Marsha passed away in 2021, having never found her daughter or closure.
Rob Shafer was distraught and deeply depressed following Angie’s kidnapping. He felt that he had failed to protect her. He moved away from the area and eventually started a family of his own.
Angie’s case was featured on an episode of Unsolved Mysteries.
To this day, the fate of Angie Hammond, as well as the identity of her abductor, remains a mystery.
If you would like to support my work and make a donation: Buy Me a Coffee
Additional Sources
The Kansas City Star, May 4th, 1991
The Kansas City Star, October 4th, 1991
(This article was originally published on HubPages)