KANSAS CITY, Kan. — For a second day, detectives and investigators dug up an empty lot where a home once stood in Kansas City, Kansas, as part of the investigation into a 1999 cold case.
Police on Tuesday said a witness who was at the bar where 39-year-old Star Boomer was last seen — and who also had a connection to the house where she lived — came forward with some new information that prompted this search.
"A lot of times on cold cases, it’s dead, and after that end this one still has a lot of hope,” Detective Shane Carpenter with KCKPD said.
Boomer lived at the house that formerly stood on the lot with her boyfriend before her disappearance in February 1999.
"We brought out some cadaver dogs a few months ago and they gave us a positive indication in an area, which is not 100% percent — it doesn’t necessarily mean there’s a body there," Carpenter said.
In working with a geological team from University of Kansas, KCKPD utilized a ground penetrating radar.
"They had some anomalies there, so we decided that was enough and we got a search warrant," Carpenter said.
Investigators first started hand-digging in the 6-feet-by-12-feet portion of the lot on which they're focusing on Monday.
"We’re not going to leave any stone unturned," Detective Tiffany Burgtorf with KCKPD said. "We’re here, we need to verify and need to make sure that we have absolutely done everything within our power to follow up on every lead we have gotten."
Tuesday afternoon, they brought in a backhoe to dig further as evidence bags were carried out from the scene.
"There are items that caught our interest so we will absolutely take them until we can show that they’re not of interest," Burgtorf said.
While detectives said the high amount of sand used to backfill the lot after the house was demolished in 2011 is unusual, they haven't found anything of note just yet.
"My big hope is that she’ll be found, and they can bring her home and put her to rest. I think that’s the one thing they would really hope for right now," Burgtorf said.
Now that they've dug deeper, investigators plan to bring the cadaver dogs back out Wednesday.
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