Family Holds Little Hope For Missing Woman

VANCOUVER, Wash. - Carolyn Killaby has been missing for more than six weeks, and her family has little hope the Clark County woman is alive.

Sheriff's detectives want to talk about the case again with a convicted killer they questioned shortly after Killaby disappeared Nov. 11.

The uncertainty is difficult, said Susan Wilson-Sheppard, Killaby's sister. "We know that she's not going to come back, but we need to know what happened," Wilson-Sheppard said.

Killaby's husband, Dan, said the couple had a minor disagreement the night before his wife vanished. The next day, things were better but Carolyn was still feeling under stress about her job as a health technician, he said.

Dan Killaby, 35, left to visit his brother, and was surprised to find his wife gone by the time he returned home. She rarely went out alone, he said.

"When it got dark outside, I got really scared," he recalled last week. "It was just not like her not to be home."

Mrs. Killaby, 34, was seen at Omar's Restaurant in the Orchards area outside the Vancouver city limits. Detectives believe she left the steakhouse between midnight and 1 a.m.

The last person to see her may have been a 43-year-old Vancouver man, who also was at Omar's that night. The man was convicted of second-degree murder in the slaying of his sister in 1982.

Shortly after Killaby's disappearance, he was questioned by detectives. After authorities seized his truck, he apparently went into hiding. A spot of blood found on the truck's steering wheel is being analyzed, detectives said.

Killaby doubts his wife will ever be coming home, but he said he has not given up.

"We didn't like to be apart," he said.

The couple married in 1990. Her daughter, Gina, now 16, and his daughter, Jennifer, 11, completed the family.