A year later, search for Joan Rebar continues
It’s been a year now since Jackson County resident Joan Rebar went missing, and members of a special task force investigating her disappearance still have no answers as to what happened to the 71-year-old woman after she left the VFW Post in Meriden late one evening in September 2015.
Jackson County Sheriff Tim Morse says that most people interviewed about the case have been cooperative.
A video showing Rebar leaving the VFW Post in Jefferson County at 1:53 a.m. on Saturday, Sept. 26, is the last time she was seen apparently, Sheriff Morse said.
“Based on our investigation, we haven’t found anyone who has had contact with her from that point on,” Morse said.
Rebar, who is described by Morse as a “very social person who was well liked” visited the VFW Post regularly and drove there that Friday evening in her silver 2005 Chrysler Pacifica bearing Kansas disabled tag 71664. Her vehicle has also not been located anywhere.
Patrons at the VFW reported that Rebar left alone from the post that evening. According to the Meriden Memorial VFW Post 10815 website, the post opens at 4 p.m. on Fridays, but closing hours were not listed.
A Silver Alert was issued for Rebar on Sept. 30 after a neighbor notified law enforcement officers that they had not seen Rebar for many days. Rebar’s home is located on the Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation reservation in Mayetta.
Ten thick binders of information regarding the case at the Jackson County Sheriff’s Office represent the large volume of interviews and data collected in the past year during the search for Rebar.
“We’ve interviewed more than 100 individuals,” Morse said. “The family has been extremely cooperative with law enforcement. We have polygraphed a lot of individuals, and most of those individuals have been cooperative.”
Members of the public are under no legal obligation to take a lie detector test, and the results of such a test are not admissible in court in Kansas, it was reported.
Members of Rebar’s family claim on social media that a person refusing to take the polygraph test is a male associate of Rebar’s who knew her through the VFW Post.
Morse said that Rebar’s disappearance is being investigated as a homicide.
“There’s no indication that she wrecked her vehicle, and there’s no indication from any of the people that we’ve interviewed that she had any intention of doing anything but going home that night.”
After searching her home, Morse said that investigators determined that she had not been there since that Friday and that she was planning to return there that evening.
“There wasn’t any activity on her banking account, and we really believe that this fits the criteria for police to investigate it as a homicide,” he said.
From the beginning of the investigation, Morse said area and state agencies have conducted extensive searches utilizing horses, UTVs, aircrafts, watercrafts and search dogs. Lakes, ponds and rivers have been searched using sonar.
Private individuals have also formed search parties on their own and offered up their time and resources to locate Rebar.
Utilizing cell phone towers, Morse said that the last known cell phone “ping” from Rebar’s phone came from a tower in Meriden around 4 a.m. that Saturday.
“Within three and a half hours of her disappearance, her cell phone was no longer operating,” he said.
The phone may have been within a seven-mile radius of the tower when it was “pinged,” and Morse said that investigators believe her cell phone was somewhere southwest of Meriden between 70th Street south near 46th Street in Jefferson and Shawnee counties.
“We’ve done some analytics and narrowed it down that the phone was somewhere in this area,” Morse said. “It appears that she or her phone were headed south from Meriden and wasn’t headed back home.”
Even though it’s believed that Rebar went missing in Jefferson County, Jackson County has been the base of operation for the investigation.
“She lives on the reservation so the Tribal Police and the sheriff’s office began the investigation when she was initially reported missing,” Morse said. “As more information developed, we got Jefferson County involved, and we’ve assembled a task force from different agencies, and we’ve been working on this ever since.”
A multi-jurisdiction task force was assembled, and its members continue to meet regularly to discuss the case and combine resources regarding the investigation, Morse said. The task force includes investigators from the Jackson County Sheriff’s Office, the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office, Potawatomi Tribal Police and the Kansas Bureau of Investigations.
There have been several “persons of interest” regarding the disappearance of Rebar, Morse said.
“Most of those people have been cleared at this point,” he said. “We haven’t labeled anyone as a suspect. We don’t have any real viable suspects at this time.”
Even with widespread media coverage on Rebar’s disappearance, Morse said that very few leads have come from the public.
“Most of the leads that we’ve had have been self generated by the task force,” he said. “We’ve looked at this from different angles, and we’ve searched parking lots and airports and Amtrak stations.”
Morse said the task force is still actively engaged in the investigation and are not considering it a “cold case.” A variety of inquisitions and subpoenas have been issued for phone records, banking records and rental vehicles.
“We haven’t come up with a lot of new leads at this point, but we are continually trying to find other areas to look into and answer other questions,” he said. “It’s disappointing, and it’s very frustrating for law enforcement. I know, nationally, there are missing people all over the country, but it’s just something that doesn’t happen too often here in rural Kansas.”
Salvage yards continue to be searched, but Rebar’s Pacifica has still not been found, either.
“Any time there is an unidentified body that is found somewhere, we’re involved with that determining if it could be related to this case,” Morse said.
While Morse said the lack of an explanation for Rebar’s disappearance is frustrating for police, it’s even more so for her family.
“The worst thing is that we don’t have any answers for her family,” he said. “That’s the most disappointing thing. It would mean a lot to the family if they knew. It would provide some closure.”
Rebar is the daughter of the late John and Marjorie “Ki gon” Abney, formerly of Mayetta. Rebar is retired and has a daughter, Twen Barton, and grandchildren.
Family members have reported that Rebar suffers from asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (C.O.P.D.) and high blood pressure.
Rebar is described as a Native American female, who is five feet, six inches tall and weighing 230 pounds. She has blue eyes and brown hair.
She was last seen wearing jeans and a t-shirt and was carrying a turquoise purse. Her right leg is amputated below the knee, and she wears a prosthesis. She also has a scar above her right eye and a tattoo of a feather on her left shoulder She has pierced ears.
Updated search information is posted in a Facebook group page “Joanie Rebar - Missing/Search Info.”
Rebar is an enrolled citizen of the Sac and Fox Nation in Kansas and has previously served on tribal council as secretary and chairman during the 1990s. She has resided on the Prairie Band Potawatomi Reservation since 1983.
Anyone with any information regarding her disappearance are asked to call the sheriff’s office at 785-364-2251 or the Prairie Band Potawatomi Tribe Police Department at 785-966-3024.
“We want to solve it, but we really haven’t found an answer yet,” Morse said. “We’re hoping this anniversary will bring attention back to the case. I have to believe there’s someone out there that knows something or hasn’t told us the whole story.”
