Katharina Buczek
Born on May 6, 1980, Erica Fraysure lived with her parents, Maggie Doherty and Kevin Fraysure, in Germantown, Kentucky.
As a senior attending Bracken County High School in 1997, she had plans to study accounting at Northern Kentucky University following graduation. Erica also worked part-time at a local pizza joint known as Carota’s Pizza, located in Augusta.
But, what started off as a normal evening with friends on October 21, 1997, turned tragic when Erica disappeared while driving home, and her small Kentucky community has been left reeling ever since.
That night, Erica was last seen with her friends between 9:00 p.m. and 10:00 p.m. They were hanging outside of a Video-N-Tan store located in Brooksville, Kentucky – a town with a population of less than 650 people.
According to Erica’s best friend, Amanda Lang, cruising around town was a typical activity for teens in the area.
“Back then, to hang out with your friends on a Friday night or a Saturday night, you got in your parent’s car, or your own car if you were lucky enough, and you went to Brooksville, and you cruised town. That’s what we did,” Amanda explained.
However, after riding around in her Pontiac Bonneville with some friends on the evening of October 21, 1997, Erica never returned home, and she was never seen or heard from again.
At the time, Amanda and other friends of Erica’s assumed she’d just stayed out – like many teens sometimes do.
“I thought, ‘She’s a teenager; she probably went and got drunk, and she fell asleep at somebody’s house, and they’ll find her,'” Amanda recalled.
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