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Ann was last seen in her hometown of Louisville, Kentucky on June 1, 1983. She was riding her red and white bicycle from the Bashford Manor Mall back to her family's residence between 5:30 p.m. and 6:00 p.m. Her bicycle was later found propped up against a brick pillar outside of Bacon's Department Store in the mall. She never arrived home and has not been heard from again. The mall was across the street from her Gerald Court home.

Ann apparently vanished without a trace; there are very few clues as to what happened to her. Police believe she was abducted by a non-family member and have thirty to forty possible suspects, many of whom have died in years since her disappearance.

Three days after Ann's disappearance, a police bloodhound picked up her scent around a ditch near the mall and led investigators to the window of an apartment across the street. It was the residence of Ester Okmyansky, the grandmother of the last friend to see Ann before she disappeared. Okmyansky said Ann had never visited the apartment. Officials eventually concluded that the dog erred when distracted by the smell of cooking food. The Okmyanskys were checked and all were cleared.

Three weeks after Ann vanished, police questioned a man who was suspected of molesting one child and exposing himself to two others. He admitted to those incidents and also to half a dozen like them in Kentucky and Indiana, but he had an alibi for the time Ann disappeared. Another man, who broke into a police officer's house in January 1984 and stabbed and attempted to rape the officer's teenage daughter, was placed at the Bashford Manor Mall just hours before Gotlib's disappearance. He denied any involvement in her case, however, and no evidence was located tying him to Ann.

Several girls living in the New York area were thought to be Ann, but they all turned out to be someone else. A theory that she was kidnapped by the Russian government in an attempt to force her family to return to that country has been discarded. There was speculation that Ann left voluntarily because she was having trouble adjusting to life in America, but her loved ones say she was not unusually anxious and, if she did run away, she would probably have contacted them eventually or taken money and her favorite possessions.

The investigation into Ann's presumed abduction remains active. Her parents still live in the Louisville area and are hopeful that the case will someday be resolved.

SOURCE: http://www.charleyproject.org

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THE GOTLIBS' STORY: 'WE STILL HOPE THAT SHE'S OUT THERE SOMEWHERE'

Jeffrey Marx
Lexington Herald-Leader
August 16, 1984

When their fears were fresh, their anxieties mounting, Anatoly and Lyudmila Gotlib became the best of friends with the telephone in their Louisville home.

With each call came a ring of hope that they had not heard the last of their daughter. Ann Gotlib , who was 12 when she disappeared from a Louisville shopping mall on June 1, 1983, is still missing.

Her bicycle was found leaning against a pillar at the mall, and police said they suspected foul play.

Fifteen months later, all the Gotlibs can do is distribute posters showing a picture of their daughter and offer a $15,000 reward for her proven whereabouts.

And they can wait, while Louisville police and the FBI check on leads.

Mrs. Gotlib, a Russian Jewish immigrant who came to the United States in 1980, said she doesn't know what else she can do to find her only child.

"What we've been trying to do is get Ann's picture before the public as much as possible," Mrs. Gotlib said. "It's easier to live with hope. There's no reason to lose hope."

Anatoly Gotlib said, "We still hope that she's out there somewhere. It's a terrible feeling (for us), of course. You can't imagine it. It's unexplainable."

The Gotlibs maintain contact with John Rabun, who left the Louisville- Jefferson County Exploited and Missing Child Unit in April to become director of the new National Center for Missing and Exploited Children in Washington, D.C.

The center gathers data on missing children and has a toll-free hot line, (800) 843-5678, for people who think they have seen a missing child.

"The national center makes a difference because we were able to put their toll-free number in our advertisements," Mrs. Gotlib said. "People are more willing to call the toll-free number than the local police or the FBI."

Still, the homicide unit of the Jefferson County police department receives reports of two or three "sightings" of Ann a week, said Lt. John Spellman, who is in charge of the investigation.

Yesterday, a woman from Ottawa, Canada, called the unit after she saw a picture of Ann in a publication about missing children, and thought she might have seen Ann in the area, Spellman said.

"We follow all the leads," Spellman said, but he added that none have panned out, and there are no prime suspects in the case. "We devote whatever investigative energies are necessary to follow all the leads."

The homicide unit also monitors arrests in Louisville to look for someone who might be involved in the Gotlib case, and the unit keeps track of national trends in missing children cases, Spellman said.

While the police continue their work, the Gotlibs, family friends and national organizations like Child Find continue the task of distributing photographs of Ann across the country and across the border. They hope that her freckles and pigtails will someday show up again as a result of all the publicity.

The Gotlibs appeared at the White House during ceremonies marking the opening of the national center. Their daughter's picture has been shown on national television after a telecast of the movie Adam, the story of Adam Walsh, an abducted 6-year-old who was found dead in Florida in 1981.

At the White House, and on several other occasions, the Gotlibs were able to visit with John Walsh, Adam's father, who is an active lobbyist for legislation dealing with missing and exploited children.

"He's been very helpful, but what can he do for us other than give advice?" Anatoly Gotlib said. "He tells us to be strong and keep hope. That's it."

The reward posters with Ann's picture on them say that she was between 4- foot-10 and 5-feet tall when she disappeared. She weighed 80 pounds, and had shoulder-length reddish-auburn hair.

In the picture, she is smiling, a smile that can bring empathy for the Gotlibs.

[Admin]

POLICE SEARCH FOR BODY OF LOUISVILLE GIRL

Associated Press
March 23, 1990

LOUISVILLE -- FBI agents and Jefferson County police searched a wooded area on the Fort Knox military reservation yesterday for the body of Ann Gotlib , who disappeared in 1983 at the age of 12.

The search began Wednesday after authorities interviewed a man on Death Row in Texas.

Louisville television station WHAS-TV quoted a source as saying that Michael L. Lockhart told an FBI psychologist about a freckle-faced girl in
Kentucky and reportedly described the shopping center where he saw her.

Lockhart has been convicted of murdering three people, including two teen- age girls.

Authorities refused to comment on whether Lockhart is a suspect in the case.

Charles Brown, spokesman for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice Institutional Division, said federal marshals transferred Lockhart from the Ellis prison unit in Huntsville on Wednesday.

"The guy did leave Death Row on March 21 and came back on the 21st," Brown said. "They apparently flew him up there (to Louisville) and flew him back."

The search focused on a restricted area at the post 45 miles outside of Louisville, but FBI spokesman Phil Doty declined to say why.

"This is another lead we are running down," Doty said. "We are treating it seriously but don't want to raise any false hopes."

Dr. George Nichols, the state medical examiner, said yesterday that county police told him a man had confessed to the crime.

"They said they required assistance at a site which had been visually identified by a man who allegedly is her murderer," Nichols said.

The youngster vanished June 1, 1983, after riding her bicycle to a Louisville mall. The bicycle was found at one end of the shopping center that night.

Gotlib and her parents had moved from the Soviet Union to Louisville in 1980.

Police have pursued hundreds of leads since the disappearance.

Lockhart, 29, of Toledo, Ohio, was sentenced to death Oct. 25, 1988, for the shooting death seven months earlier of a Beaumont police officer.

He also has been sentenced to death for killing teen-age girls in Indiana and Florida.

Officials said Lockhart had told police he killed 20 to 30 young girls and committed crimes in all but five states.

[Admin]

FBI ENDS SEARCH AT FORT KNOX-
AUTHORITIES WERE LOOKING FOR GIRL MISSING SINCE 1983

Lexington Herald-Leader
March 24, 1990

The FBI has halted for now its search at the Fort Knox military reservation for a young girl missing since 1983.

On Thursday, authorities combed a restricted area at Fort Knox looking for some trace of Ann Gotlib , who disappeared from a Louisville shopping mall when she was 12.

"We plan to re-evaluate the information that we have which led us to that location on the Fort Knox base," FBI spokesman Phillip Doty said yesterday. "If needed, we may resume searching part of the Fort Knox base at a later date, but at the present time, no."

Doty confirmed that Michael Lockhart, a Texas Death Row inmate, was brought to Kentucky for one day last week..

But he declined to discuss a published report that a man had made a confession in the case.

"As for confessing on the case, I can't confirm anything like that," Doty said.

George Nichols, the state medical examiner, told reporters Thursday that police had informed him a man had confessed.

Ann Gotlib and her parents had moved to Louisville from the Soviet Union in 1980. On June 1, 1983, the child rode her bicycle to Louisville's Bashford Manor Mall. The bike was found at the mall that night, but the girl was not seen again.

Since then authorities have checked numerous leads without success.

Lockhart, 29, apparently was flown to Louisville on Wednesday, then returned to prison in Texas later that day. A Louisville television station, quoting an unnamed source, reported that Lockhart told authorities about a young girl in Kentucky and reportedly had described the shopping center where he saw her.

Officially, however, the FBI isn't saying what information, if any, Lockhart provided.

Lockhart, from Toledo, Ohio, has been convicted of killing a police officer and two teen-age girls. He was sentenced to death for the 1988 shooting of a Beaumont, Texas, policeman.

Doty indicated the search at Fort Knox would not resume for some time, if at all.

[Admin]

COUPLE SEEKING TO SEARCH POST FOR GIRL'S BODY

Associated Press
Lexington Herald-Leader
March 27, 1994

LOUISVILLE -- A couple whose daughter was last seen almost 11 years ago when she was 12 years old want another search of Fort Knox, where a convicted killer says he left her body.

Anatoly and Ludmilla Gotlib issued a statement yesterday asking for clearance to search an area pinpointed on a map of the post by Michael Lee Lockhart, who is on Death Row in Texas.

Lockhart was a soldier at Fort Knox when Ann Gotlib disappeared June 1, 1983. He says he murdered her and dumped her body there.

Almost exactly four years have passed since authorities searched Fort Knox. Lockhart was brought to Kentucky for one day during the search.

Last year, Lockhart pinpointed an exact location of the girl's body on a map of the Fort Knox grounds, her parents said.

Lockhart sent the map to The Child Connection Inc., a Louisville agency that uses a trained scent dog to search for missing people. The Child Connection asked Fort Knox for permission to search, the statement said, and officials there contacted the FBI.

The FBI will not comment on the case, but the Gotlibs' statement said the FBI wants to interview Lockhart again, something Lockhart will not agree to.

"Whether Mr. Lockhart is telling the truth or not, we do not know," the statement said. "We only know that this needs to be searched. This door needs to be closed once and for all."

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Gotlib case - 20 years later
Girl's disappearance, though unsolved, helped transform such investigations

Sheryl Edelen
The Courier-Journal
June 2, 2003

An abandoned bicycle was all police found when 12-year-old Ann Gotlib went missing from the Bashford Manor Mall area of Jefferson County 20 years ago yesterday.

Since then, nothing - and everything - has changed.

"Twenty years ago, when we stood in front of reporters like this, making this plea, we could never have imagined, after all these years, doing it again," Ann's mother, Lyudmila Gotlib, said yesterday from atop the stairs in front of the Hall of Justice. "But here we are."

"We realize that after 20 years, generations change and it will be harder to find witnesses, but miracles happen and we are clinging to the hope that a miracle can happen for us."

Lyudmila Gotlib and her husband, Anatoly, appealed again yesterday for information that will answer the question that's stumped police and FBI officials despite thousands of leads and two decades of investigation.

What happened to Ann?

Meanwhile, child-welfare advocates say Ann's case has helped increase national awareness of missing and abducted children and has revolutionized how missing-child cases are handled across the country.

The Gotlib case was "part of the reason that Congress realized that Americans needed help with missing children," said Charles Pickett, a senior case manager at the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

Congress created the center, which is in Alexandria, Va., in 1984 to help law-enforcement agencies work together to find missing children.

When Ann - a girl with auburn hair and freckles - disappeared, much of the country was beginning to talk more about missing children. At that time, an estimated 1.8million children vanished from their homes each year.

But Louisville had never dealt with a case like Ann's.

"What's important to understand is … that a little girl would disappear and never be seen again, and no one ever be charged, in a noncustodial abduction, is rather rare," said David Beyer, spokesman for the FBI office in Louisville.

Before Ann vanished, it was so rare that a local child-advocacy group formed in May 1983 found few people willing to join its volunteer ranks.

"This was an issue that was very hard to get people to talk about," said Lucy Lee, executive director of the Exploited Children's Help Organization. "It was just too frightening to think about something like that happening here."

The following month, it did.

On June 1 Ann disappeared in broad daylight from the busy shopping center on Bardstown Road, across the street from her home on Gerald Court.

Volunteers then came from everywhere, Lee said, to join existing ECHO members and police to search ditches, mail fliers to police departments across the country, canvass nearby neighborhoods and pray. ECHO members also arranged fund-raisers and coordinated news conferences for Ann's parents.

"They are quiet people and it was very difficult for them to face the media, but they knew they had to," Lee said. "We did what you do when you're helping any family in the midst of a tragedy."'

The possibilities

As time passed, various theories about Ann's disappearance surfaced.

Among them was the possibility that Ann, whose family immigrated from Russia in 1980, had become the victim of a Soviet government kidnapping designed to force the family's return. After some checking, FBI officials said they found no evidence to support this.

There was also speculation that Ann had left voluntarily because she was having trouble adjusting to American life and getting along with friends. Family and friends, however, said that the girl's anxiety was typical of adolescence. Police eventually agreed, saying that if she'd left voluntarily, she'd most likely have contacted a relative or taken money and some f avorite possessions.

And then there were the wrong turns, strange coincidences and bad tips.

Three days after Ann's disappearance, a police bloodhound picked up Ann's scent around a ditch near the mall and led detectives to the window of an apartment in a complex across the street. It was the home of Ester Okmyansky, the grandmother of the last friend to see Ann before she disappeared. Okmyansky said later that Ann had never visited the apartment.

FBI officials said the dog erred when distracted by the smell of cooking food, even though the dog's handler thought it too coincidental that the scent led to a relative of a friend of Ann's. The Okmyanskys were eventually checked and cleared.

Three weeks after Ann's disappearance, police questioned a Nicholasville man suspected of molesting a 10-year-old girl at the Jewish Community Center jogging track and flashing two nearby 6-year-olds hours before Ann vanished.

That man, Ralph Barry Barbour, admitted the incidents involving those three children and acknowledged abusing half a dozen others in Kentucky and Indiana, but three witnesses said he was in a Lexington trophy shop at the time of Ann's disappearance.

In January 1984, a man accused of breaking into a house, then stabbing and attempting to rape a police officer's 13-year-old daughter, became a strong suspect.

Bank records showed that that man, Gregory Lewis Oakley Jr., had even visited a bank branch in the mall just hours before Ann vanished. But Oakley denied involvement and no physical evidence linking him to Ann was ever found.

In May 1984, Ann's photo was featured as part of a made-for-television movie about another missing child. Afterward, a Boston resident reported seeing a "dirty, freckle-faced girl" in the city's Charlestown section who ran away when called by the name Ann. About 200 detectives searched but found nothing.

In 1990, Texas death-row inmate Michael Lee Lockhart claimed that Ann was among 20 to 30 girls he had killed and that he had buried her body at Fort Knox while there on active duty seven years earlier. After three days of digging up a remote tank range, however, police also discounted that tip.

Three years later, Lockhart provided the Gotlibs with a map of the alleged point of burial, and the family asked for permission to dig at the Army post. Jefferson County police went to the post but could find no terrain that matched Lockhart's map.

The national picture

During the early 1980s, child experts around the country were beginning to look to Louisville for innovative ways to help keep children safe and prosecute adults who hurt them.

The creation of the Jefferson County Missing and Exploited Child Unit, which paired social workers and police officers to work on child-abuse and child-exploitation cases, had proved so successful that it became a national model.

And in 1981, Ernie Allen, once head of the Louisville-Jefferson County Crime Commission and the county's chief administrative officer, invited experts on teen runaways, child pornography, kidnapping and child prostitution and the parents of high-profile missing or abducted children to Louisville for a conference on those issues.

The conference, the first of its kind, helped organize a successful lobbying effort for legislation needed to create the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

Since then, the center has helped law enforcement with more than 89,000 missing-child cases and the recovery of 73,351 children by serving as a liaison between the agencies, managing its own investigations of missing-child cases and working to keep the children in the public eye.

The center also trains officers and other police personnel around the country in ways to quickly find missing children.

John Rabun, head of the Jefferson County exploitation unit at the time of Ann's disappearance, was asked to oversee that effort through the unit's model program not long after center was created.

Even now, however, he can't help but note the irony of receiving national praise for investigative methods that didn't find Ann but that made all the difference in finding scores of other children.

For example, he said, Ann's case was one of the first in which detectives used billboards.

"Everyone told us it was stupid to do that, but luckily, the company was willing to do it for free. We got a slew of leads from those," he said of the big signs asking for information on Ann's case along highways from Indianapolis to Lexington. "You couldn't have lived within a hundred miles from Louisville and not known about Ann.

"It all should've worked, but it didn't," he said.

Ann's case was one of the first to enter the center's system. Of the more than 8,000 cases that the center's staff constantly update and investigate, it is now one of the oldest.

Charles Pickett, a senior case manager at the center, has handled Ann's case since the beginning. As part of his duties, Pickett stays in contact with local police and FBI agents working the case, updating the center's file. He also monitors crimes in other parts of the country, searching for similarities and possible leads on suspects and keeps the Gotlib family informed. Updated reports are filed on Ann's case at least every 90 days.

Pickett said that local investigators and agents have been as tenacious in investigating Ann's case over the years as any he's seen, and that some cases as old as Ann's are eventually solved.

"They are looking at everything they can look at in this case," Pickett said of police. "This 20th anniversary is no different than 16, 17, 18, or 19. … We're still looking at people who could match this case."

To help with that effort, the center conducted an intensive two-day cold-case review in Alexandria last month for Louisville and FBI officials working Ann's case, plus a representative from the Jefferson County commonwealth's attorney's office. During the meeting, Pickett said they and some of the country's best criminal and cold-case experts reviewed every aspect of the case - every suspect, every shred of evidence and every lead - to come up with new clues.

Pickett said he doesn't expect police to ever stop looking for Ann.

"They still hold out hope that it's going to get resolved," he said. "They want to bring it to an end."

The numbers

Nearly 800,000 children - more than 2,000 a day - were reported missing in 1999, according to the National Incidence Studies of Missing, Abducted, Runaway and Throwaway Children. Of those, only 115 cases involved children being abducted by a stranger or slight acquaintance, transported more than 50 miles from home, and permanently kept, ransomed or killed.

Earlier estimates of the numbers of missing children are considered sketchy, because study definitions varied so widely, but experts think the number of nonfamily abductions has decreased from the 200 to 300 reported in 1990.

Kentucky has had a sharp decrease in the number of missing children, from 8,093 in 1993 to 4,648 last year. On average, officials say, about 250 children remain missing at the end of each year, the majority of them runaways.

In Indiana, the overall number of missing youngsters is higher - between 11,000 and 15,000 annually over the past eight years - but a steady decrease has also left police there with fewer children to find.

Kentucky officials acknowledge that Ann's case raised awareness of the problem in the 1980s, but credit the state's decrease to public awareness of more recent disappearances, which included 1996 abductions of 9-year-old Amber Hagerman in Arlington, Texas, and 7-year-old Morgan Violi of Bowling Green. Both girls were found murdered.

They also cite the success of preventive efforts. In December, Kentucky kicked off its Amber Alert program. It will work through the state's existing emergency-alert system to issue alerts about abducted children on radio, television and highway message signs. Indiana began its Amber Alert program in October.

There are at least 41 programs across the country, and they have been credited with recovering at least 17 children since 1997.

"Fortunately, we haven't had to activate our system at all since our program began. We ran a test in December and found that the signal had reached the outermost areas of Kentucky within four minutes and was scrolling across televisions within 10 minutes," said Kentucky State Police Capt. Sonny Cease, head of the state Amber Alert program. "We're prepared to use it every day but hope we don't have to."

The toll

It's been four years since he retired from the FBI, and even longer since he worked on the investigation, but the burden of not having solved the Gotlib case still haunts Chris Hoehle, 60, who lives in La Grange.

"She's the first thing I think about when I wake up and the last thing I think about at night." Hoehle said. "Anatoly and Lyudmila, they're such wonderful people. I think of them every day."

Hoehle and his partner, Phil Austin, were part of an army of federal and local officials working the case over the years. And he said that although the officers he worked with were dedicated, it doesn't matter. They failed.

He failed.

"You can sweeten it up any way you want. … We were responsible for finding this child," he said. "We failed individually and as a collective group."

During yesterday's news conference, Lyudmila and Anatoly Gotlib recognized the efforts of police and FBI agents.

The couple still hope someone will provide the information they need to let them lay the uncertainty to rest within their lifetimes, and they said they have looked for ways to live their lives without Ann.

"We have our friends, our family, our job," her mother said. "We try to live as normally as possible."

[Admin]

Ann Gotlib 's fate remains mystery
Girl, 12, vanishedquarter-century ago

Sara Cunningham
The Courier-Journal
May 31, 2008

The evidence relating to the 1983 disappearance of Ann Gotlib takes up an entire four-drawer file cabinet in the Louisville Metro Police Major Crimes Division.

Despite the staggering volume of tips, leads and theories surrounding the missing 12- year-old Russian immigrant with red hair and freckles, what happened to Ann remains a mystery, said Maj. Dave Wood, commander of the Major Crimes Division, which is responsible for the case.

"Until we physically have a body, somebody tells us where she is or she walks in the door, it'll be an open case," Wood said yesterday during a news conference held to mark the 25th anniversary tomorrow of the girl's disappearance.

Ann was last seen on June 1, 1983, at Bashford Manor Mall, across the street from her Gerald Court home. She was supposed to be headed home but never got there. Her bike was found leaning against a brick pillar at the busy shopping center off Bardstown Road.

At the time, Wood was working on the traffic detail for Jefferson County police and was called in to help search.

Police combed the area, talking to anyone who might have witnessed what happened, but nothing turned up that explained Ann's disappearance.

There were witnesses who couldn't pass polygraph tests, suspects with air tight alibis, strange coincidences and tips that led nowhere.

Some of the more outlandish theories included the suggestion that the Soviet government had kidnapped Ann because it wanted to force her family to return to Russia. FBI officials said they never found evidence that supported the theory.

Others thought she ran away or was murdered by a serial killer. But there was never any concrete evidence to convince police.

"Everything's a possibility until we find a body or her," Wood said.

Ann's parents, Lyudmila and Anatoly Gotlib, still live in Louisville and talk to police off and on about the case, Wood said.

The Gotlibs are also still in contact with the Exploited Children's Help Organization. ECHO, formed just a month before Ann vanished, provides support for families of abused or missing children, said Lucy Lee, executive director of the organization.

"Our founder, Rosie Norris, has always been a support person for Ann's parents," Lee said.

Norris will be one of the speakers at a memorial service to be held in Ann's honor tomorrow at the Meredith Dunn School. The Gotlibs plan to attend. A plaque will be put near a tree planted in Ann's memory, Lee said.

"We're holding the service for all missing children, especially Ann," Lee said. "Families want the public to remember their child's photo, their faces. It's very difficult, but you never know when something might trigger a memory that could help find out what happened to Ann."

Police continue to pursue leads that come in from time to time about Ann, Wood said. Police ask anyone who might know something about the disappearance of Ann Gotlib or any other missing person to call the anonymous tip hot line at 574-LMPD.

"Any time it's a child, it's a traumatic event for the community," Wood said. "It's one of those open wounds we'd like to heal for the community."

[Admin]

25 years and still no sign of girl immigrant, 12, went missing in louisville

Associated Press
June 1, 2008

LOUISVILLE -- The mall where Ann Gotlib 's bike was found 25 years ago is gone, converted to a Wal-Mart and a Lowe's.

But a quarter-century later, the mystery of the 12-year-old Russian immigrant's disappearance has not gone away, and investigators are renewing their call for the public's help solving it.

"Any time it's a child, it's a traumatic event for the community," Louisville Police Maj. Dave Wood said during a news conference marking the 25th anniversary of her disappearance. "It's one of those open wounds we'd like to heal for the community."

Evidence in the girl's disappearance takes up a four-drawer file cabinet at the Louisville Metro Police Department's Major Crimes Division, which Wood heads.

Gotlib was last seen on June 1, 1983, at Bashford Manor Mall, across the street from her home. She was supposed to be headed back to her house, but never arrived.

Her bike was found leaning against a brick pillar at the busy shopping center. Police searched the area and talked to witnesses but found nothing to explain what happened to the girl with the red hair and freckles.

There were witnesses who couldn't pass polygraph tests, suspects with alibis, strange coincidences and tips that led nowhere.

Multiple theories arose -- even a suggestion that the Soviet government had kidnapped Gotlib because it wanted to force her family to return to Russia.

FBI officials said they never found evidence to support the theory. Others thought she ran away or was murdered by a serial killer. But there was never any concrete evidence to convince police.

"Everything's a possibility until we find a body or her," said Wood, who was working on a traffic detail at the time and assisted in the search.

Ann's parents, Lyudmila and Anatoly Gotlib, still live in Louisville and talk to police off and on about the case, Wood said. The Gotlibs are also still in contact with the Exploited Children's Help Organization. ECHO provides support for families of abused or missing children, said Lucy Lee, executive director of the organization.

The group plans to put a plaque near a tree planted in Ann's memory at the Meredith Dunn School, Lee said.

"We're holding the service for all missing children, especially Ann," Lee said. "You never know when something might trigger a memory that could help find out what happened to Ann."

Police still pursue leads that come in from time to time, Wood said. "Until we physically have a body, somebody tells us where she is or she walks in the door, it'll be an open case," Wood said.

[Admin]

'We still hope for a miracle'
Ceremony marks child's 1983 disappearance

Peter Smith
The Courier-Journal
June 2, 2008

When family and friends marked the fifth anniversary of the 1983 disappearance of 12-year-old Ann Gotlib , they planted a child-sized blue spruce in front of the school where her mother worked at the time.

Last evening, on the 25th anniversary of her disappearance, more than 50 family and friends gathered again to place yellow bows in a tree that now towers as high as the two-story roof of the Meredith-Dunn School near Taylorsville Road and Hikes Lane.

And they proclaimed their continued commitment to finding out what happened to Ann while also raising awareness of child exploitation.

"We still hope for a miracle, because nothing short of a miracle can help to solve all this," said her mother, Ludmilla Gotlib.

Ann disappeared on June 1, 1983. She was last seen at Bashford Manor Mall on Bardstown Road, near where she lived on Gerald Court. Her bicycle was found at the former shopping center, and police have kept the case open since, pursuing numerous leads but never finding evidence enabling them to conclude if she is alive or dead.

The continued pursuit of the case "helps me to keep hope," said Ann's father, Anatoly Gotlib. "That's important."

He said both local police and the Federal Bureau of Investigation have shown him the huge files they have kept of the investigation. "We all want that to materialize somehow, not just (as) paper only," he said.

While marking the anniversary is painful, "we live with it every day," Ludmilla Gotlib said. "June 1 might be a little different, but not very different, because we've got to live with that pain like one gets used to living with physical pain."

She said some of her fellow religious education teachers at The Temple on Brownsboro Road were once classmates of Ann. "So I encounter (such reminders) all the time . Her pictures are all over our house."

The ceremony was organized by the Exploited Children's Help Organization, which coincidentally was founded 25 years ago to provide education and raise awareness of the issues of child exploitation, abuse and abductions.

ECHO volunteer Rosie Norris cited news accounts of police solving cases that had gone cold decades earlier. "How did that happen?" she asked — then answered by saying that citizens and law-enforcement officials were determined to "keep hope alive."

ECHO Executive D irector Lucy Lee noted that the past 25 years have brought new tools for finding missing children, such as the Amber Alerts that broadcast bulletins of abductions and improved technologies that produce images of what a missing child would look like years later.

Such photos of Ann and other missing children from Kentucky and Indiana covered a bulletin board at yesterday's ceremony.

Many of those attending knew the Gotlibs — who had immigrated from the Soviet Union in 1980 — at the time of Ann's disappearance.

"It's something you never forget," said Lynn Tyler, who also lived on Gerald Court at one time.

Ludmilla Gotlib said her daughter was "a beautiful child as far as appearance , and as far as her soul and mind."

"She and I really were friends, because we shared our dreams when we came to this country," she said. "... It was a life full of promise and it was taken away."

Yesterday's commemoration marked "a very sad anniversary, but it's a beautiful ceremony," she said, adding that she hopes that "within our lifetime, everything will be solved, and we will know what happened."

[Admin]

Ann Gotlib's family still hopeful she'll be found

Lindsay English
WAVE 3
June 2, 2008

LOUISVILLE (WAVE) - Still so many questions and so few answers for the family of Ann Gotlib 25 years after she disappeared. Ann vanished June 1st, 1983 on her way home from a friend's house on her bike. Her bike was later found outside Bashford Manor Mall, but Ann was never found. As WAVE 3's Lindsay English reports, her family still hasn't given up hope.

Ann and her parents lived in an apartment across the street from Bashford Manor Mall, so it wasn't unusual for her to be riding her bike in the area.

Years ago, when the Ann Gotlib case was still new, her family planted a tree at her school in her honor. That day a poem was read. "He who plants a tree, plants hope," went the line.

That is still true for the Gotlib family a quarter-century after losing her daughter. "People are still looking, they are still searching, there are still investigations. It really gives us hope that someday, hopefully in our lifetime, everything will be solved," said Ann's mother, Ludmilla.

Although the case remains unsolved, the investigation into Ann's disappearance continues and Ann's father, Anatoly says that "helps me to keep hope, and that's important."

The decades-long absence of their daughter is something Ann's parents carry with them every day.

"We learn to cope and we learn to live with it. We live with it everyday. I'm teaching Sunday School at the temple and the teachers who teach there used to be in the same class as Ann. So I encounter it all the time," said Ludmilla.

On the 25th anniversary of their daughter's disappearance, the Gotlibs added a plaque in front of the tree at Meredith Dunn Elementary School as friends, family and members of the Exploited Exploited Children's Help Organization or ECHO, looked on.

Ann disappeared about a month after ECHO was formed, and its members worked tirelessly to find her. Without the Internet or an Amber Alert system in place, they sent out postcards with Ann's picture.

"We're making a statement to the family that the Louisville community remembers. And when we remember, we are compelled to look, to search, to try our best to find Ann, to keep the investigation going," said Rosie Norris, an ECHO volunteer.

Even as another anniversary passes, the Gotlibs say they still believe someday they won't have to mark this painful day anymore. "We still hope for a miracle," said Ludmilla. "Because nothing short of a miracle can help solve all this and bring her back."

The Gotlibs say they keep in contact with investigators about once a year, usually close to the anniversary of her disappearance.

Ann would have turned 37 this year, and police recently released an age progression photo showing what she might look like now