The Chilling Disappearance of Kelly Bergh Dove
"Please hurry, he's come back" was the last thing Kelly said to the 911 dispatcher before vanishing
Woman Abducted From Gas Station
In the early morning hours of June 18th, 1982, 20-year-old Kelly Bergh Dove was working third shift at the Imperial gas station in Harrisonburg, Virginia. She was there alone when a strange man showed up and began harassing her.
She would ultimately make three 911 calls to report this individual’s disturbing behavior, with the final call ending on the haunting note of “Please hurry, he’s come back.”
Unfortunately, law enforcement would arrive too late to help the young mother. They found the gas station empty, with Kelly’s purse and money sitting on the counter. She and her assailant were already gone. Decades later, Kelly is still missing.
Who abducted Kelly Bergh Dove?
Kelly Jean Bergh Dove
One of six children, Kelly Jean Bergh was born on August 30th, 1961, in Virginia, to parents Rachel and Ernest. Kelly’s parents divorced when she was a child and her mother remarried to a man named Fred Bergh, whom Kelly came to view as her father. (Side note: It’s unclear what her biological father’s surname is.)
Kelly was friendly, upbeat, and hardworking. She was also said to be “scrappy,” someone who wasn’t afraid to stand up for herself. She married a construction worker named Dale Dove in 1977 and the two had a daughter together, Tami, that same year.
She absolutely adored Tami and was a devoted mother. The small family resided in Bridgewater, Virginia. Kelly, who was still a teenager when she got married and had a baby, graduated early from Turner Ashby High School and began working at the Imperial gas station in Harrisonburg.
Kelly’s sister Debbie managed the gas station and two of her other sisters worked there as well. Kelly typically worked daytime shifts, but on June 17th, 1982, one of her sisters asked to switch shifts with her and she agreed to work overnight instead.
Obscene Calls Escalate to Abduction
Dale dropped Kelly off at work at 10 p.m. on June 17th. The early part of her shift appears to have passed uneventfully. She spoke to her mother Rachel on the phone around midnight and things seemed to be fine. Then, in the middle of the night, a man arrived and started to make her uncomfortable.
At 2:27 a.m. Kelly made the first of three 911 calls.
This is what she had to say:
“I just had an obscene phone call and this guy came in earlier and he was kind of dressed improperly but I kind of ignored him. I think it was that guy, because he just drove through the parking lot a few seconds before I got the call. Could you, you know, have somebody kind of keep an eye out on me?”
Exactly what Kelly meant by “dressed improperly” is unclear, but some have interpreted this to mean that the man was exposing himself to her.
As for obscene phone calls, those was unfortunately a common occurrence at Imperial.
“We get those all the time,” Kelly’s sister Debbie said.
There was a payphone outside of the gas station, which Kelly believed the caller was using to harass her.
She sounded calm and collected during the first 911 call, but she would become increasingly more panicked over the next few minutes.
At 2:29 a.m., just two minutes later, she phoned 911 again. The customer was still harassing her and she mentioned that he was driving a “silver-colored Ford.”
Kelly made her third and final call for help at 2:30 a.m. It’s believed that the man was likely inside the gas station at this point. Her final words were a frightened plea: “Please hurry, he’s come back.”
A shuffling sound could be heard before the line went silent.
Help Arrives Too Late
A police officer reportedly arrived at the Imperial gas station at 2:31 a.m., but Kelly and her abductor were nowhere to be found. Kelly's purse, with her cash still inside, sat on the counter, as did the magazine that she’d been reading that night. No money had been taken from the cash register.
There was also a cigarette that had burned out in the ashtray. (Side note: Kelly was a smoker, but it’s unknown if this cigarette belonged to her or her assailant, and it’s unclear if it was preserved as potential evidence.)
Law enforcement suspected that her abductor had a weapon and that this was how he managed to quickly force her into his vehicle before help could arrive. They also believed that this was a sexually-motivated crime of opportunity, given the obscene nature of the calls she’d been receiving from the perpetrator.
They began to search the area for a vehicle resembling the one described by Kelly, but had no luck in locating it. When Dale and Kelly’s family learned that she was missing, they started their own search. Dale drove around, desperate to find his wife.
“I know it’s a wild goose chase, but it’s still better than sitting around.”
The area was combed multiple times by searchers, but no clues materialized.
Dale Dove was questioned early in the investigation and eliminated as a person of interest.
Oddly, investigators even briefly considered that Kelly might have chosen to leave.
“There’s no way she would have gone off on her own,” Dale said. “Not with the money and cigarettes there and the magazine open—and her little girl.”
Her family strongly agreed that she would never have willingly abandoned her 4-year-old child and said that she was happy in her life.
Investigation Stalls
The authorities resumed investigating her disappearance as a crime. They received hundreds of tips, from witnesses who claimed to have seen the missing woman, as well as from those who’d encountered a man who exposed himself to them. None of these leads could be substantiated or helped to move the investigation forward.
However, one tip came in that seemed promising. The Imperial gas station was situated on a fairly remote stretch of road, but there was a convenience store nearby. A clerk who was working there the night that Kelly went missing reported seeing a man driving around in a two-tone silver car.
The clerk described him as a thin white male, 20-25 years old, with shoulder-length blond hair. A composite sketch was made of this individual.
Lieutenant Hubert Myers had his doubts as to whether the person making the obscene calls was the same one who kidnapped Kelly.
“It doesn’t fit the pattern. An exhibitor wants to be seen and not caught. An obscene caller wants to be heard and not caught. The abductor doesn’t fit either of those descriptions. We’ve had women abducted and raped and let loose, but never anything like this.”
Interestingly, though, the obscene calls—which had been a frequent occurrence before—ceased almost entirely after Kelly vanished, with the gas station receiving only one in the six weeks following her disappearance.
Kelly’s family was disappointed in the way her case was handled. The gas station was never fully processed as a crime scene. They didn’t rope it off with police tape or dust for fingerprints. Customers came and went as usual.
For their part, the officers felt that dusting for prints would have been unhelpful, as they assumed there would be many fingerprints in there that didn’t belong to the man who’d abducted Kelly and possibly none that did.
A Similar Vehicle is Spotted
Kelly’s disappearance was never far from her mother’s mind.
“When I’m driving to work in the morning, I think, ‘Do I pass her body everyday?’” said Rachel.
Her loved ones continued to keep an eye out for a silver car in the area. It’s not clear when, but one day Rachel noticed a vehicle matching that description parked on the street and notified police. They obtained permission from the owner and searched it.
While they didn’t find anything overtly suspicious, they also didn’t have technology as advanced then, which might have proved useful in finding evidence at the time. The identity of the car’s owner or whether or not this person resembled the composite sketch has never been revealed.
However, something of possible significance that they discovered in the trunk would come up years later (more on that in a bit).
A Promising Lead
Kelly’s case went cold for many years due to a lack of evidence or viable leads. In 1989, she was declared legally dead. But her loved ones never gave up on finding her.
In 2020, her case was officially reopened and Detective Brooke Wetherell took over the investigation. She began by going back over all of the original case files and took the time to interview all of the original persons of interest in Kelly’s disappearance. All but one of these men were eliminated once again.
Detectives looked more closely at the man they could not rule out as a suspect. Interestingly, they learned that he’d actually gone to high school with Kelly.
Granted, she hadn’t seemed to know her attacker (if she had, she probably would have given his name to the 911 dispatcher), but it’s also possible that she didn’t really know the suspect (if this was the true culprit) in school or remember him. Additionally, she mostly stayed close to home when she wasn’t working and didn’t socialize a lot.
More compellingly, this individual looked similar to the man in the composite sketch and had a criminal record, which included offenses like indecent exposure and making lewd phone calls. He had also owned a vehicle in the past similar to the one that Kelly had described.
“My gut tells me that it’s this person,” said Elaine, Kelly’s sister. “And if I could know they were watching me now, I would say ‘I don’t know how you can live with yourself, come forward.’ If anybody knows anything I don’t see how they can hold in that information day after day.”
On another significant note: This individual (whose name has never been released to the public) was reportedly identified as a person of interest in an anonymous letter to police.
In order to be thorough, investigators also looked over what was found in the search of the car that Rachel had spotted years earlier and had everything tested again. That’s when it was discovered that the trunk of this vehicle had had a shoe print inside it that matched Kelly’s own shoe size. However, we don’t know what shoes she was wearing that night.
Furthermore, it’s important to note that it’s unclear if the person who owned that vehicle is the same man they view as their prime suspect now.
As of yet, no one has been charged in Kelly’s case and no suspects have been publicly named.
Regardless, these recent developments have raised hopes, as it now appears that Kelly’s disappearance, more than 40 years later, has a real chance of finally being solved—perhaps in the near future.
“Knowing and feeling confident that you know what happened and being able to prove it are two very different things,” said Detective Wetherell. “And so that’s kind of where we’re floating at right now. Within the last year we’re trying to get across the bridge of what we know and what we can prove.”
If you have any information regarding the disappearance of Kelly Dove, you are encouraged to contact Detective Wetherell at (540) 432-7788.
Or, if you’d prefer to remain anonymous, you can reach out to the Crime Solvers anonymous tip line at (540) 574-5050.
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great read !