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Kimberly Doss was fourteen when she telephoned her mother from Davenport, Iowa, on March 24, 1980, asking for a ticket home to Houston. She planned to break the journey in Chicago with a girl she met called Cathy, but she never reached Texas.
When Linda Doss tried to file a missing-person report, Houston police claimed the disappearance belonged to Iowa's jurisdiction, while Davenport officers said the opposite.
A formal report was finally accepted only after Linda relocated to Davenport in September 1982, more than two years after the teenager vanished. Investigative progress stalled again in 1984 when Los Angeles police arrested a woman using the name Kimberly Gardner. Davenport detectives mistakenly believed that the runaway story fit and therefore closed the case.
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DNA testing in 2021 proved the identification false, reopening the search. The renewed inquiry is outlined in the recent Crime Junkie episode UPDATE: Kimberly Doss aired on June 2, 2025. It details a new detective’s efforts and the family’s plea for answers about Kimberly Doss’s fate. It was previously visited in MISSING: Runaway Train Kids on February 6, 2024.
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Wendy’s last sighting of Kimberly Doss links suspicious teen Cecil’s car, prompting her to question friend Fred about possible involvement
Wendy Doss remembers seeing her cousin, Kimberly Doss, step out of Dallas’s pickup, argue, and then climb into a green two-door driven by 17-year-old Cecil. She was an older schoolmate whose behavior had already made Wendy uneasy. Concerned, she pressed their mutual friend, “Fred,” for details.
Fred later confirmed that Cecil had dropped him off at his foster home before driving away with Kimberly. Cecil told Fred the fourteen-year-old walked off the next morning without a coat, an unlikely scenario given the late-March cold in Davenport, Iowa. Police never interviewed Cecil before his death in 2025, leaving a critical lead unexplored.
Investigation delays and jurisdiction hurdles
Kimberly phoned her mother on March 24, 1980, asking for a bus ticket from Davenport to Houston. When she failed to arrive, Linda Doss tried to file a missing-person report in both cities, but each department claimed the case belonged elsewhere.
It was only after Linda moved back to Iowa that Davenport Police accepted the report on September 1, 1982, by listing Kimberly as a runaway. They recorded her age as sixteen, not fourteen, an error that slowed early inquiries. As per the Crime junkie episode MISSING: Runaway Train Kids, on Quad City Times report dated October 3 1980, Linda placed a classified ad pleading:
"Kim, I'm here from Texas.... I want very much to see you. I miss you terribly. I love you very much. I don't want to make any more problems I just want you to call me and to let me know you are all right”
This public appeal produced no confirmed sightings. A 1984 tip from Los Angeles suggested a teenager using the alias Kimberly Gardner, involved in street-level trafficking, might be Kimberly Doss.
Davenport detectives wrongly believed the cases matched, closing the file without confirming identity. Decades later, DNA established that Gardner (real name Shannon Jones) was unrelated, showing how the misidentification derailed momentum for years.
Misidentification overturned and the role of the Crime Junkie episode
The misstep kept Kimberly Doss out of national databases until 1999, and her file was removed and refiled more than once. The wider public first heard an updated narrative through the 2024 Crime Junkie episode MISSING: Runaway Train Kids, which highlighted the investigative gaps. A follow-up episode, UPDATE: Kimberly Doss, aired on June 2, 2025, and corrected many longstanding inaccuracies.
Host Brit Prawat told listeners, as per the UPDATE: Kimberly Doss episode dated June 2, 2025,
“A lot of the official information out there about her case is just flat-out wrong,”
Today, Davenport Police assigned a new detective who collaborates with Kimberly’s family and a volunteer advocate to re-examine original leads, verify timelines, and correct database entries. The family remains convinced Kimberly did not simply run away; they cite her regular phone contact, her unclaimed bus ticket, and the absence of any confirmed sightings after March 1980.
Stay tuned for more updates.
