Our card this week is Barbara Dreyer, the King of Hearts from Washington, DC.

It was a warm Sunday evening in 1984 when 39-year-old Barbara disappeared from the streets

of Washington, DC.

Almost 40 years later, the blatant missteps in the early days of the investigation still

haunt her case.

And those missteps are possibly what stands in the way of it being solved today.

I'm Ashley Flowers and this is The Deck.

It was nearing the end of August 1984 and none of Barbara Dreyer's five children had seen

or heard from her in more than a week.

The last time they had heard from her was around 5pm on August 12th when she dropped off

her six and nine-year-old sons to stay with one of her older kids, an adult daughter.

Barbara told her daughter that she'd be right back and that she just had to go pick up some

money.

From what I can tell, this wasn't anything out of the ordinary, a single mother with

a full-time job and a lot on her plate.

I'm sure it was nice to be able to drop her kids off and run some errands without her

young children.

But what was out of the ordinary is that she just never returned.

At first, no one was overly concerned.

They all assumed that maybe she was hanging out at her ex-husband's place.

He lived right across the DC-Marryland border in Hillcrest Heights and the two had a good

relationship, so she would often go visit him, and it wasn't anything out of the ordinary

...