The Disappearance of Katrina McVeigh (Rhode Island)
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The last time Katrina McVeigh's loved ones heard from her, she was making plans to attend a family wedding. But when the big day rolled around, Katrina was a no-show. Now, more than three decades later, Katrina's disappearance remains unsolved, and the theories about what really happened still linger. I'm Kylie Lowe, and this is the case of Katrina McVeigh on Dark Down East.

It was June of 1992, and it had been weeks since the family of 27-year-old Katrina McVeigh had heard from her, and even longer since they'd seen Katrina in person. It wasn't totally out of the ordinary to go long stretches of time without any contact, but then again, her family at least expected to see Katrina for a wedding on May 16th.

That's Todd Tebow, Katrina's younger brother. He was 16 years old at the time and living with his mother in Woonsocket, Rhode Island. Both he and Katrina grew up in the Ocean State.

Originally, everybody was pretty ticked off, thinking, you know, she went and did something. That's not the first thing she had missed, you know. It was true that Katrina had been going through a tumultuous time in her life, but she was working to get back on her feet. Whatever the reason she didn't make it to her brother's wedding, Todd and his family half expected a phone call with an explanation or an apology. But the days went by without one.

Time went on. So it would have been typical to two, three, four weeks before you'd hear from her again. In between that time, my mom got a phone call from someone. It wasn't Katrina. In fact, nobody knows who the caller was to this day. But what they said changed everything and began a several decades-long quest for answers. Tell Todd he can find his sister by the riverbank.

The message cast the weeks without hearing from Katrina in an entirely different light. What did it mean she was by the riverbank? Did something terrible happen? There were only more questions that surfaced as Katrina's family tried to get in touch with her themselves, but she wasn't anywhere to be found.

When Katrina's mother Charlotte filed a missing persons report with Woonsocket Police that June, she didn't know yet that Katrina had already been missing for nearly a month. Todd and Katrina are about 10 years apart. So when his mother was working, it was big sister Katrina who looked after him. They spent a lot of time together and looked out for one another. You know, you didn't mess with little bro and you didn't mess with big sis, you know?

It's just one of those things. We're two peas in a pod, but completely different. Many of his memories with Katrina are the simple times. Just two kids growing up in the 80s around Providence and Kent County, Rhode Island. We spent a lot of time camping. We spent a lot of time walking. There wasn't anywhere we didn't walk. Sometimes I felt like we walked the length of Rhode Island at times.

By the summer of 1992, Katrina had long been out of her mother's house. She'd gotten married and then divorced, and then married again in March of 1988 to a man named Richard McVeigh. They had two children together, and Katrina had another child from a previous marriage. They moved out of Rhode Island and lived in Maine for a while.

According to her family, Katrina's marriage to Richard was not a happy or safe one. Richard was controlling and abusive. According to police logs published in the Lewiston Sun-Journal, when Katrina and Richard were living in Maine in April of 1988, Richard was arrested and charged with domestic assault. He was released on personal recognizance on the condition that he would not associate with his wife for two days.

He entered a not guilty plea, but it's unclear how that case was resolved. Todd personally witnessed one incident of physical abuse by Richard against his sister and he called police. It was the same night Katrina decided to leave Richard for good.

After their separation, and due to challenges Katrina faced that impacted her ability to care for her children, the kids were placed in the custody of Katrina's mother while Katrina tried to find solid ground in her own life. Russ Olivio reports for the Wound Socket Call that Katrina tried to stay at a shelter for battered women. Katrina believed she was safe there until Richard showed up one day. He somehow found out where she was and came looking for her.

As reported by the Woonsocket Call, shelter staff told Katrina she was, quote, End quote. After that, Katrina was unhoused.

The circumstances of the custody arrangement for her children allowed her to visit the kids anytime. But for reasons unknown to Todd, Katrina wasn't permitted to live under the same roof as her children at the time. There's a place called Social Park, World War II Memorial Park. All us kids, we called it Social Ocean. At the time, the playground had these concrete covers stacked up that the kids used to play on. And for a while, she was sleeping in those at the park.

So every step she'd take, she'd get kicked back about three yards, whether it be from child services, whether it be from the shelter, whether it be from her circumstances when she had nowhere to go.

Previous reporting has alluded to Katrina's possible involvement in sex work and selling and using drugs, but as far as Todd knows, and according to the source material I have access to for this case, Katrina was never arrested or charged with any related crimes. However, people she spent time with and eventually lived with were definitely wrapped up in that scene.

For a time, Katrina was staying at a residence on Lincoln Street. That's where Todd saw his sister for the last time. I had showed up at the house on Lincoln Street that she was staying at, and I knocked on the door. I ticked off a couple people that I was there. I got a free ride down the stairs. Didn't care.

She evidently wasn't there, but she came over to tell me, hey, I'm fine. She appreciated me coming to check on her, this, that, and everything else. I mean, we had a decent conversation. It wasn't an argument or anything like that. I was like, you know, hey, what do you need? The best 16, 17-year-old can say, you know. But it was more of a brother-sister conversation than anything. Hindsight being 20-20, I probably would have made it more meaningful than it was.

Immediately before her disappearance, Katrina found housing with a friend named Judy Burton, who said she could stay at her place while she figured out what was next. Katrina moved into Judy's apartment at 295 2nd Avenue in Woonsocket, and that's where she was known to be living in the months before she went missing.

Providence Bristol Superior Court records show that Judy Burton had faced charges for possession of a needle and syringe in 1984, possession of a controlled substance in 1987, receiving stolen goods in 1989, simple assault and battery in 1991, and later several drug-related offenses, which we'll get into in a bit.

It remains a possibility in Todd's mind that his sister was involved in or partied to some of these activities knowing who she was living with. When she went and did anything that may have been shady and whether it had been prostitution or dealing drugs, people make choices. I'm not excusing it if that's indeed what was going on, but she was surviving. She wasn't living. And she was at the bottom of the bottom at that point of her life.

But even at the bottom, even when she kept getting knocked down, even when everything seemed to be working against her, Todd says Katrina kept going, doing whatever was necessary to survive until things got better. She wasn't a person without hope, and she was a person definitely trying to get back on her feet. Everywhere she reached, though, was just barely out of her grasp. She fell through the cracks on everything.

Following up on the initial missing persons report, Woonsocket police turned to Judy, hoping to discover Katrina's last known whereabouts. According to Steve Winters reporting for the Providence Journal, Judy told investigators that the last time she saw Katrina was on the night of May 14th, as they were leaving Ollie's Pizza Parlor on South Main Street in Woonsocket.

Judy said that as they walked outside the pizza joint, a white man driving an older model car pulled up alongside them and Katrina got in. From there, Judy wasn't sure where Katrina went, but she never came back to the apartment that night or since. If Judy got a good look at the driver or provided any more of a description of the person or vehicle, that's not public information.

Meanwhile, Katrina's family plastered missing persons posters around Woonsocket, as well as Providence, Central Falls, and Cumberland, hoping to shake out any sightings or tips. And tips did come in. Police say they received information from as far away as Fall River and New Bedford, Massachusetts, but they were dead ends. Todd was putting boots to the ground and searching for Katrina himself.

He may have been a kid, but he was willing to do anything if it meant bringing his big sister home. The call his mother received stuck with him. "Tell Todd he can find his sister by the riverbank."

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The 48-mile-long Blackstone River winds its way from Worcester, Massachusetts through Woonsocket and down Pawtucket Falls in Pawtucket, Rhode Island. If Katrina really was somewhere near that river, Todd was determined to find her. That message from the anonymous caller made him angry. His anger propelled him into action. Oh, you're talking about a pissed-off teenager. In a couple other radio edits, I'm not going to say...

Todd was no stranger to covering long distances on foot. Remember, he and his sister used to walk everywhere together as kids.

Now he was walking in search of his sister, covering miles upon miles, mostly alone. So I went from Cumberland, Rhode Island, all the way on up to just before Blackstone. On each side, I walked that for like a summer. Sometimes people went with me. Most of the time they didn't, you know. One point I had found a kitten, brought it home, named her Cat for Katrina, you know. So...

Todd was out on a search one day, scouring the riverbanks in Costa Park off First Avenue in Woonsocket, when he found something. I was going through it, and at the time, you know, parts of it were overgrown. I came to a spot, and I found a white turtleneck and some other items, you know, that just resembled... The last time I had spoke to her, that's what she was wearing. She was always cold. She was itty-bitty. So I was thinking those were hers, and I reported it as such.

Todd used the phone at a nearby package store to call his mother, but he's not sure what happened to the items after that. And neither do current investigators on the case. What happened to those things, I don't know. The Woonsocket police currently don't know what happened to those items. But something happened after Todd made that discovery on the riverbank. The phone rang at his mother's house again. This time, Charlotte knew for sure who was on the other end of the line.

It was Katrina's estranged husband, Richard McVeigh. My mother got a second phone call to tell me that I would never find her. I actually had walked in the house with my girlfriend at the time when my mom got that phone call and he told her that I would not find her. I will never forget it. It was just like a movie. You know, you walk in and the dreaded phone call comes in.

Todd took the phone call as a sign that maybe he was onto something. I had got a little too close, I feel like. Whether those were her clothes or not, I got a little too close, I think, than what somebody was comfortable with. Law enforcement already had Richard McVeigh on their radar even before Katrina's mother received that phone call from a person she believed was Richard. But Richard swore he never made that call and claimed he didn't know where Katrina was either.

According to a book by Linda Rosenkranz and former Woonsocket Police Captain Edward Lee Jr. called "The Ripper," Richard McVeigh told police that the last time he saw Katrina was all the way back in January of that year, 1992, more than six months before she was reported missing. When he was asked about the phone call that Charlotte said she received from him, Richard said he didn't know anything about it and he claimed he didn't call her.

He felt that Charlotte just didn't like him, and she was always blaming him for all the problems in Katrina's life. And you know, Richard was probably right about his mother-in-law not liking him. One look at his criminal past, plus his future convictions, and I can't imagine any parent wanting their child hanging out with a person like him. His offenses in Rhode Island include a 1989 conviction for second-degree child abuse.

In September of 1991, Richard was charged with domestic assault and served six months in jail. Then in July of 1992, a few months after Katrina was last seen, Richard was arrested and charged with eight counts of first-degree sexual assault. Court records reveal the vile and atrocious sexual assault Richard committed against his own child over the course of several years.

When he finally faced trial for his crimes, Richard was convicted and sentenced to life in prison. So although Richard had been in and out of jail in the years before Katrina disappeared, and would be put away for good after she disappeared, Richard was out and about around the time Katrina was last seen alive.

And even though they hadn't located her remains or any conclusive evidence that Katrina was deceased, Woonsocket police had been treating her disappearance as a homicide just in case things shifted that direction. So Richard was, without a doubt, a suspect in Katrina's disappearance. But this isn't an open and shut, the husband did it case. Not in the eyes of Katrina's family. We don't think he did it. We think he knows something.

There's another angle that they believe is more likely than Richard McVeigh. Those first few months after Katrina was reported missing, Woonsocket police continued to suss out the theories and leads they dug up.

Some people who police interviewed said they thought Katrina may have left town to be a sex worker, while others thought she was abducted and could be alive somewhere. Another theory suggested there wasn't anything nefarious about her disappearance. Katrina might have been living with a friend on Cape Cod. There were claims that she had run off, run away and everything else, but she, unfortunately the kids never really got to know her past a, you know, young age, but she loved those kids.

She would have never ran off without him. The leads all proved to be false. No matter where they looked, they didn't find Katrina. Katrina's disappearance wasn't the only concerning incident local investigators were handling at the time. Around the time that Katrina was last seen, two women were attacked in two separate incidents near the Rhode Island border outside of Blackstone, Massachusetts.

In one case, a woman was abducted at knife point but was able to escape and run to a nearby police cruiser for help. In the other incident, a woman was sexually assaulted in St. Charles Cemetery in Blackstone, but she too was able to escape and seek help. Police considered the possibility that Katrina's disappearance was related to the two attacks but hadn't identified a suspect or proven connection between any of the cases.

Meanwhile, as the search for Katrina was ongoing, the woman Katrina was staying with at the time of her disappearance was arrested for unrelated crimes. In late July of 1992, Judy Burton and three other suspects were arrested following an undercover sting. Judy was charged with distributing heroin. Police questioned Judy again following her arrest, but they didn't learn anything new to aid in the search for Katrina.

If you ask Todd, ongoing efforts to crack down on narcotics distribution in the greater Woonsocket area, including this undercover sting that resulted in Judy's arrest, could hold the answers to his sister's disappearance. He says Katrina told his mother something before she disappeared.

Supposedly, she was doing a little CI work with the police department and then she told my mother, "Hey, you know, you're gonna see this in the paper. Don't panic 'cause I'm not gonna be one of the ones arrested, but just be quiet about it, whatever."

Todd has been the primary contact for his sister's case in recent years, and he's on good terms with the investigators currently handling the file. But when he asks about his sister possibly being a confidential informant for police, and the role that may have played in her disappearance, the tone of the conversation shifts. The department got very guarded when I brought that up.

But I'm not making accusations. I'm questioning. If it's the wrong route, then it's the wrong route. If it's possible, okay, then it's possible. Either way, let's either put it to rest or, you know, say, okay, it's a possibility. There wasn't any one convincing lead to direct the investigation down a focused path. But the what and why weren't nearly as important to Todd as where.

Police have conducted multiple searches throughout the years. They've searched along the riverbank, in the park where Katrina sometimes slept, and beyond.

And there was a couple of places I had given the one socket PD. There was a house that had a dirt basement and another place. And they went and they checked it out and there was nothing there. It was like, as I remembered it, they ran the dogs through the park and didn't find anything. But I didn't expect them to either, you know, especially after the second phone call.

Katrina's case went cold fast. It took 17 years before she received any significant concentrated attention again. In 2009, Woonsocket Police assigned a pair of detectives to review two unsolved cases, including Katrina's disappearance.

Woonsocket Police Captain Edward Lee said the plan was to review evidence, fill gaps of information, and re-interview witnesses. Captain Lee was hopeful that contemporary investigative methods would yield new information in the cases. But there was no significant evidence developed as part of this effort.

Todd remembers the sudden resurgence of attention on his sister's case from both law enforcement and the media alike years after that, when Rhode Island announced the formation of a new cold case squad. Again, Katrina's case was under review to see if new investigative measures could warm up a case that had sat cold for years. This is maybe where those items Todd found on the riverbank in Costa Park could have been critical.

If they still existed somewhere, maybe they could have been tested and ruled in or out as belonging to Katrina. But that evidence is still MIA.

In fact, when I had my meeting with the quote-unquote cold case squad folks, they asked me if I knew if they picked it up because there was nothing cataloged in the evidence locker. I can't be upset with them because they weren't the ones in the original investigation. But like I said, it's one of those things that everything was always within reach and, you know, somehow it got away.

Katrina's case remains unsolved today, regardless of the renewed effort in 2009 and any investigation since the formation of the Cold Case Squad. It's cold. The case is cold. It's going to take somebody stumbling across something before we find anything out. Todd has continued searching for Katrina over the years, remaining hopeful that this may someday all come to an end and Katrina will be found.

He's not sure why the two callers singled him out back in 1992, but it didn't scare him knowing someone was out there, maybe even watching his every move as he looked for his sister. And I would walk to work and there would be a dark-colored truck that would kind of follow me or something. Supposedly it was a dark-colored vehicle that she left with. But I think I was too young, young and dumb, to really be scared at the time. I think I was more hopeful than...

For better or worse, that I would run into whoever it was at that time, you know, thinking like a teenager versus thinking of somebody with sense. Though he no longer lives in Rhode Island, whenever he's back in the state to visit family, he makes a point to check in with police. He is actually planning to return to Woonsocket in the near future to follow up on some new information and conduct another search.

This person I know from childhood, she was close to the streets from a young age. But she had given me a hint where she might be. It was pretty close to where I was looking. So I plan on going back just to check out that one spot. Just, you never know. I don't think she's there, but it's just to put it to rest in my head.

He knows it's possible that all of his efforts in searching along the river throughout the last three-plus decades may have been fueled by false information to begin with. She may have never been near the river. Do we know? No, that's just where it was pointed.

But until something convinces him otherwise, Todd will keep searching. And he'll keep in touch with police, though he's long felt his sister deserved more attention from Woonsocket PD than she was given during the original investigation. You know, back in those days, if you had a person who was close to the street like that, they didn't get much attention. And that's just the truth.

Nobody around her time especially was thought of as a person who was going through things like that. And that's just, that's reality of it. The interactions between Katrina's family and Woonsocket Police have varied throughout the years. Things are better now, but for a long time, it felt like they were always getting the runaround. ♪

I've had positive experiences over the last few years with Chief Oaks and stuff versus when all this had occurred or even going back to Rhode Island and trying to check in on it and just being completely ignored. We sat downstairs in the police department three hours one time and nobody ever showed up. But they knew we were there, but nobody showed up to talk to us. Since then, Todd has made headway with investigators, and he feels that's partially because of his own law enforcement background.

As a retired police officer himself, Todd has a beneficial perspective when talking to Woonsocket PD and trying to get information out of them. It deserves mention, too, that as someone navigating a family member's unsolved case, Todd had an even greater understanding for what victims' families go through. "It was also an asset in my career because I see it from both ends.

So you can understand the frustration because you don't have the information to give or at the time there's something you can't put out because you got to hold it back for whatever reason. And there's also, you know, I hate to be thought of a victim, but the whole family is. And you're looking for information yourself. As of right now, Todd maintains his own theories about what caused his sister's disappearance.

Although her estranged husband's track record of violence puts him on the case radar as a possible suspect, Todd isn't convinced that's the answer here. I think it has something to do with that drug raid, to be honest with you, and it got out. Judy Burton, who Katrina was living with at the time of her disappearance, has not been named a suspect, nor does source material lead me to believe she is implicated at all in Katrina's case.

However, Judy was arrested again in October of 1992 during a raid at two apartments in Woonsocket. She was among five people charged with possessing and delivering cocaine. It's evident that there was an ongoing effort to crack down on the distribution of cocaine and heroin in Providence County around the time of Katrina's disappearance, and Judy was involved in the sale of those drugs.

But whether Katrina played a part in the raids and stings as a confidential informant prior to her disappearance cannot be verified at this time. As for Richard McVeigh, he died in prison from lung cancer. If he had any information about Katrina's disappearance, it died with him. Almost 33 years later, Todd's memories of his sister, like his love for her, have not faded.

He finds ways to honor Katrina in his daily life. She liked that song, Delta Dawn, and she liked the Tanya Tucker version. The thing is, the Delta Dawn song is so crazy if you listen to the words, you know, about a flower and about he's coming to take you home and things like that. So I don't know, you kind of try to fit things in where they don't necessarily fit. But yeah, that was her song. So every now and then I put it on my playlist and hit it.

My wife's great with gardening and stuff, so we plant carnations. Those are my sister's favorite flowers. We take the carnations, we throw them off the bridge, it being a river, because we don't have any answers, and throw them off the bridge near the park that I believe I found her clothes. So when we get a chance, that's what we do. But there's carnations outside all the time to help remind her of her.

The bridge and the carnations and the song compose his makeshift memorial for Katrina until his family can bring her home themselves. That's what they want more than anything. Justice has taken a secondary seat to just finding Katrina and giving her a proper burial. I've got the reality of...

This is probably not going to be solved. She's probably not... And the solving part don't mean two flip sticks at this point in life. All the main suspects are dead anyway. So just getting her from where she's at and putting her in the grave that my mom has for her, whatever it might be, whether it's a toenail or whether it's a whole skeleton, you know, just...

Finding her or something of her, that would be the goal. But I'm at a complete loss. I just may leave it to the guy up above and just have to accept it. If you have information relating to the case of Katrina McVeigh and could help bring her home, please contact the Woonsocket Police Department at 401-766-1212.

Thank you for listening to Dark Down East. You can find all source material for this case at darkdowneast.com. Be sure to follow the show on Instagram at darkdowneast. This platform is for the families and friends who have lost their loved ones, and for those who are still searching for answers. I'm not about to let those names or their stories get lost with time. I'm Kylie Lowe, and this is Dark Down East.

Dark Down East is a production of Kylie Media and Audiochuck. So, what do you think, Chuck? Do you approve?