About the Case:
Monaco and her older sister lived in Derby, Connecticut in 1978. They took a vacation trip to Virginia Beach, Virginia on August 20, the day after Monaco's eighteenth birthday, and registered at the Aloha Motel on 15th Street.
Monaco and her sister went to the Country Comfort bar on Pacific Avenue on the night of August 22. A man there kept urging Monaco to go out with him, and told her he had a yacht, but she was uninterested. Monaco was last seen at 1:00 a.m. August 23, when she left her sister and began walking to a bar called Peabody's, where she had a prearranged a date with a bartender.
The bar was six blocks away. Witnesses saw Monaco get into a car on Pacific Avenue; the vehicle reportedly contained four or five men. She never arrived for her date and has never been heard from again. Her sister tried to report her as a missing person later that day, but the police refused to take a report for 48 hours.
Eight months after Monaco's disappearance, her family advertised a $10,000 reward for her recovery, dead or alive. In response to the ad, a man came forward claiming he had witnessed Monaco's rape and murder the night of her disappearance. He told investigators that Monaco's killers had abducted her as she walked along Pacific Avenue, put her in a sedan, drove her to a lakeside cottage near Oceana, Virginia, killed her and dumped her body in a lake.
Authorities dragged the lake and found a cinder block with a rope tied to it, but they didn't find Monaco's remains. The informant reportedly passed a polygraph exam, but he ceased cooperating after authorities refused to offer him immunity from prosecution in exchange for his testimony.
Other witnesses and suspects have been interviewed over the years. James L. "Jimbo" Moore Jr. spoke to the police in 2001 and reportedly gave them information he could only have known if he was with Monaco on the night of her disappearance. He agreed to take a polygraph to verify the authenticity of his story, but only hours after he made his statement, before he could take the test, took his own life outside his apartment.
- Case Type:
- Missing Person
- Incident Date:
- 08/25/1978
- Location:
- Pacific Avenue, Virginia Beach
- Status:
- Active
