Investigators continue to seek answers in disappearance of Patti Adkins
Lt. Jeff Stiers has been trying to answer the same question for the past 20 years: Where is Patti Adkins?
He said it’s a simple question with a complex answer.
“It’s the most frustrating case I’ve ever had,” Stiers said.
Though time has passed, investigators’ desire to solve the case hasn’t waned.
“It’s been 20 years and we still talk about it weekly – if not daily,” Stiers said.
He knows the exact second Adkins was last seen alive: 19 seconds after midnight on June 29, 2001.
She was in the tunnel of Honda’s Marysville Auto Plant, where she clocked out of her second-shift supervisor’s job. Stiers said Adkins wasn’t even seen in the parking lot, though there were not cameras there at the time.
It wasn’t until more than a week later, though, that anyone realized she was missing.
Adkins asked her sister, Marcia Pitts, to watch her daughter while she was away during Honda’s shutdown week.
When Adkins didn’t arrive to pick up her daughter on July 8, Pitts went to her sister’s home and found her Honda Accord in the garage and her ID, bank card and clothes undisturbed in the house.
She contacted the Marysville Police Department to report Adkins missing. Since she went missing outside of city limits, Stiers said the Union County Sheriff’s Office became involved “a couple days later.”
“It didn’t matter who solved this case,” Stiers said, adding that detectives from outside agencies, including the FBI, have collaborated since.
Stiers said he spent the first two months after Adkins’ disappearance working on only her case. He interviewed everyone who worked on her line at Honda, along with dozens of other coworkers and acquaintances.
Pitts, as well as a close friend and coworker of Adkins, told investigators Adkins was going on vacation with her on-again, off-again boyfriend, a married coworker.
Police have not released the identity of the man. Stiers referred to him as “a person of interest,” but declined to call him the primary suspect.
Adkins told her family and close friends about the covert relationship. She reportedly said the man intended to leave his wife to be with her.
Stiers said Adkins told her loved ones that she was spending the holiday week with the man in Canada.
Adkins was apparently told not to take anything with her, Stiers said, but she packed a duffel bag. She asked a friend for a ride to work so she could leave for the trip directly from Honda.
Family members contacted the friend who gave Adkins a ride to find out the details of the trip and Adkins’ plans.
They told Stiers that Adkins was told to get into the bed of her boyfriend’s truck, under the bed cover, after work so others would not know about their relationship.
Stiers said the pair planned for a friend to ride in the cab while the boyfriend drove him to his house in Kenton. Once he dropped off the friend, Adkins was supposed to get out of the bed and ride in the cab.
The friend who rode with Adkins’ boyfriend did not know about their plan or if a person was in the truck bed, Stiers said.
When Adkins didn’t return from her trip, family members also contacted her boyfriend.
They said they had a bad feeling when the man acted confused as to who Adkins was and claimed he did not know about a trip.
According to Adkins’ family, she loaned the man tens of thousands of dollars, draining her savings and borrowing from her retirement account.
When investigators questioned the boyfriend, he claimed he barely knew Adkins. He said there was no affair and no planned vacation.
He told police he and a coworker drove home after work, stopping to get food on the way.
When police questioned him at his home, they noticed a freshly poured patch of concrete. Officials dug at the site, but nothing was found.
Investigators also found a bed cover for the man’s truck. Stiers said it was put on the truck the day Adkins was allegedly planning to ride in the bed.
Stiers said investigators found a drop of blood on the bed cover, equal to the trace left “if you smashed a mosquito.”
According to the Union County Sheriff’s Office, a test of the blood showed it belonged to the boyfriend, but was mixed with DNA evidence from another person.
Officials have previously said they are waiting for technology to progress in order to test the remaining sample.
Though Adkins’ body has never been found, she was declared legally deceased. The duffel bag she packed was never recovered.
Stiers said finding Adkins’ body is “key at this point.”
“We don’t care who tells us (where Adkins’ body is),” he said. “We want the family to have closure.”
Stiers said investigators receive tips on a near-weekly basis from community members, people throughout the U.S. and beyond, and even psychics.
“Every lead has been touched,” he said.
He noted that investigators have been so thorough that they even acquired a receipt from a store in Florida, where Adkins reportedly bought a Harley Davidson t-shirt and phone for her boyfriend before she disappeared.
Two decades worth of details amounts to eight banker boxes filled with documents – “the largest case I’ve ever seen come through here,” Stiers said.
Even so, Stiers said he knows there are others with more information.
“Oh, it’s going to get solved,” said Brian Lacy, a retired Columbus Police Department detective working with the Union County Prosecutor’s Office on the case. “It’s just going to take that one person.”
Patricia “Patti” Adkins would be 49 years old today. She is described as 5 feet 8 inches tall with blonde hair and hazel eyes. She weighs 120 pounds.
Those with any information are asked to call Stiers at (937) 645-4126 or email jstiers@unioncountyohio.gov. Anonymous information may be left by calling the Union County Sheriff’s Office Crime Tip Hotline at (937) 642-7653.