Missing Kristen Modafferi: Updated On February 9th 2020

📸Kristin Deborah Modafferi📸

She was very creative and a good person.

She was born on June 1st, 1979 in Danbury, Connecticut to Debbie, a teacher, and Bob Modafferi, an electrical engineer. She was raised in Charlotte, North Carolina.

Kristen was an industrial design major at North Carolina State University in 1997. She arrived alone in San Francisco, California on June 1st, 1997 on a Park Scholarship, to attend a summer photography course at the University of California at Berkeley. It was her 18th birthday.

She used Craigslist to find a room in a house on 274 Jayne Avenue in Oakland, where she had four male roommates. And Kristen found employment Monday through Friday from 7:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. at Spinelli's Coffee Shop in the Crocker Galleria Mall in San Francisco, California. She had just started a second job on weekends at the Cafe Museo at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. She was taking a dance class. She was also planning to start class at Berkeley on June 24th, 1997, which sadly never happened.

Kristen was last seen on the afternoon of June 23rd, 1997, at  Spinelli's. Spinelli's was. She has not been seen or heard from since.

A Spinelli's co-worker remembered that she asked for directions to Baker Beach and may have been intending to go to a party.

When she left the Galleria, Kristen was wearing a black Spinelli's t-shirt, a long-sleeved blue plaid flannel shirt, tan pants and possibly hightop Fly London sneakers. She had a green JanSport backpack with a couple of library books inside.

Her shift ended at 3 p.m., but co-workers noticed her talking to an unidentified blond woman on the Galleria's second floor about 45 minutes later.

Bloodhounds would later track her scent to the Muni 38 Geary bus from the stop outside the Galleria. Her trail was also picked up near the end of the bus route, at Sutro Heights Park, but the dogs lost it along the beach beyond the Sutro Baths ruins.

Her roommates were not concerned that she didn't show up on that night of June 23rd.They thought she might have stayed at a friend's overnight.

After Kristen's father, Bob Modafferi, called the house and left a message for Kristen to call home, one of her roommates telephoned him to let him know that they had not seen her for three days.

Kristen's parents flew out there on the quickest flight. When they arrived, the detectives on the case had went home and were off duty for the weekend. No one else had any information in Kristen's case and the parents were told to wait until Monday.... Which was a full week since she was last seen.

When the Kristen's parents searched her room, they found a Bay Guardian stuffed in a trash can with a personal ad circled that read:

"FRIENDS: Female seeking friends to share activities, who enjoy music, photography, working out, walks, coffee, or simply the beach, exploring the Bay area! Interested, call me."
Detectives later tried to find the name of the person who took out the ad, but they were unsuccessful.

Police still don't know if Kristen placed the ad or if she responded to it or what.

SUSPECTS

Jon Onuma and Jill Lampo aka Jillian Lazzaro

They lived about a mile from Kristen's work.

Oakland PD conducted a search warrant their apartment. 

They find a 365 day calendar with the dates of June 23rd and June 24th torn out. Kristen vanished on June 23rd.

Three weeks after Kristen went missing, Jon Onuma called in a tip to a local news station. He claimed that two woman killed Kristen in a lesbian love triangle. He was trying to pin Kristen's case on two women who worked with his then-girlfriend Jill Lampo. He said Kristen's body was dumped from a wooden bridge near Point Reyes. Police cleared Lampo's coworkers after questioning them.

Jill Lampo agreed to an on-camera interview, if her face wasn't shown. She said she was at the library on June 23.

John was on America's Most Wanted. At least 6 women claim that he attacked them. He was never charged.

"He hit me over the head ... and said 'you know I'm going to have to kill you. I can't let you go,'" one accuser, in silhouette, said. "Then he turned around and said, 'now you know what happened to Kristen Modafferi.'"

John flees California and settles in Kaneohe, Hawaii. 

John is evicted from the residence after his connection to Kristen is made known. A month later, he calls the property manager seeking permission to get back inside the home to retrieve a briefcase he left hidden in the attic. The property manager denied Onuma's request and personally recovered the hidden briefcase. The briefcase contained articles about Kristen.

June 5th, 2012, Jill Lampo tells her uncle that she dated a controlling man and he convinced her to assist in an unspeakable kidnap and murder.

Matthew Luque 

He was dating Jill Lampo before Jon Onuma.

He went to work at Spinelli's three days after Kristen went missing.

DEVELOPEMENTS

In 2015, a forensic investigator offered his services free to the Modafferis brought a cadaver dog to Kristen's former apartment.  The dog "alerted" to the scent associated with decaying human remains in the basement of the house.

Investigator Paul Dostie and forensic anthropologist Dr. Arpad Vass said further tests confirmed that human decomposition was present in the area.

Oakland police said they needed to do their own tests at the house, but three years later, little or no progress has been made toward that goal.

"If she hasn't passed on, then our imagination of what could be happening to her is horrific," said Allison Modafferi, Kristen's older sister. "We know, without a doubt, that if she was able to reach us, she would reach us."

"There really isn't a day when we're not thinking about Kristen," 
said her father, Bob Modafferi.
Also in 2015. Allison begged killer Robert Durst to "come clean" and help put an end to Kristen's disappearance. Durst owned a house in San Francisco at the time Kristen vanished. The last sighting of Kristen was walking through the upscale mall with a blonde woman, who has never been identified. Speculation has risen in recent days that it was in fact Durst, a noted cross-dresser. Durst is an American real estate heir, the son of New York City mogul Seymour Durst, and the elder brother of Douglas Durst, head of the Durst Organization. He is suspected of having murdered three individuals in different states: Kathleen McCormack Durst, his first wife, who disappeared in New York in 1982; Susan Berman, his longtime friend, who was killed in California in 2000; and his neighbor, Morris Black, who was killed in Texas in 2001. 

Durst was the subject of a multi-state manhunt and was ultimately convicted of dismembering Black, but acquitted of his murder. His trial for Berman's murder is set for January 13, 2020.

Tips can be made to the Oakland Police Department's Missing Persons Unit at (510) 238-3352 or (510) 238-3370.
A Modafferi family friend also runs a website   where anonymous tips can be sent.