Brenda Lambert, circa 1992

BLUEFIELD, W.Va. — After almost 24 years, Christy Kennedy is not giving up hope that the missing person cases involving her older sister will be resolved.

“I feel like I have been in a nightmare,” she said Wednesday, relating the mysterious vanishing of Brenda Gail Lambert from her Bluewell, West Virginia home.

Lambert, who was 22 at the time, was last seen by her family at the birthday party of her 1-year-old son on July 26, 1992.

“We left the party at 9 p.m.” Kennedy, who was 14 at the time, said. “That’s the last time we saw her.”

Lambert was reported missing two days later by her husband, Raymond Lambert.

According to police reports, the mother of two did not take her car and few, if any, personal items.

“There was nothing missing but her,” Kennedy said, adding that her sister would have never left her children.

Five and half months after Lambert was reported missing, an acquaintance, Mark Anthony Cook, also disappeared.

Cook, 24 at the time, was last seen in the early morning hours of Jan. 14, 1993, after leaving a bar in nearby Brushfork, West Virginia.

Authorities believe the cases may be connected.

“I honestly believe the disappearances are connected, unless someone proves to me otherwise,” Bailey told the Bluefield, West Virginia Daily Telegraph during a 2006 follow up on the case.

As in the Lambert case, Cook’s disappearance was sudden and without a trace.

In a 1994 article on the case, Lambert had called the Princeton, West Virginia Police Department asking for information about how to drop a domestic violence petition 16 days before her disappearance, but no further details were available.

In that same article, police reported a male suspect had been given a polygraph test, but the results were not released. Lie-detector tests are not admissible in West Virginia courts.

In 2003, police received a tip the bodies of Lambert and Cook could be found in a local pond.

An attempt to drain the pond was unsuccessful, but the department brought in a diver and, later, specialized underwater video equipment to search the murky depths.

No bodies or evidence were found.

Mercer County Chief Deputy Darrell Bailey said at the time that, without a body, homicide is difficult to prove, making the cases hard to investigate.

“If we had a body, we would have a new way to go with the investigation,” Bailey said in 2006. “The body can tell us a lot, even if there is nothing left but a skeleton.”

Today, Kennedy is not giving up and recently donated her DNA to a data bank.

“It will be compared to the DNA of unidentified female bodies found in our area and around the country,” she said. “Advances in technology are amazing. Cases are solved all the time now (using DNA evidence).”

Kennedy said she has “tried to live normally,” but it’s difficult to do.

“You always fear that (disappearance of a loved one) for other people,” she said. “But when you go through it, it brings up a whole other world. You just never think it’s going to happen to you.”

Kennedy said her mother died three years after the disappearance, but “there was closure, and there is no closure in not knowing. You always have a little hope that she will come home if she is out there.”

Kennedy said she will not give up and she does not want anyone to forget about the cases.

“People need to realize that evil walks among us,” she said.

Chief Deputy Bailey said Wednesday that he is also not giving up on the case.

“It’s a cold case but in no way is it a closed case,” he said. “This case has bothered me since it happened.”

Bailey said it was “probably a homicide” and a suspect was questioned, but to no avail.

“I have not let this case go,” he said. “I have a huge amount of paperwork that I keep in my office and I have since it happened.”

Kennedy’s DNA sample was given to National Missing and Unidentified Persons System (NamUs) in Fort Worth, Texas, he said. 

Kennedy said she will continue to push the case, everywhere she can.

“I will keep trying up until I’m 100 years old,” she said.

If anyone has any information that may be related to the case, Bailey can be contacted by e-mail through the Mercer County Sheriff’s Department website or through the sheriff’s department tip line at 304-487-8365.

Boothe writes for the Bluefield, West Virginia Daily Telegraph.