A teen's body is found in Stark Pond in Dunbarton, NH On a chilly November day in 1989, 14-year-old Caucasian female Sonya Moore vanished from her home on Summer Street in Penacook, a village within Concord, New Hampshire. Initially, her disappearance was not met with immediate alarm, as she had a history of staying out and sometimes skipping school. Her mother, Debra, noted that Sonya was due in court for a juvenile theft charge the day after she was last seen on November 2nd.
When Sonya failed to appear, her mother informed the judge that her daughter was just being herself. However, as days turned into weeks with no word from the teenager, a deeper sense of dread began to settle in among her family and friends. They held onto the hope that she might have run away to pursue her dreams of becoming a model.
The harsh New Hampshire winter came and went, blanketing the landscape in snow and ice. As the spring thaw began in April 1990, a grim discovery was made. On April 7, nearly five months after she was last seen, a motorist visiting the Stark Pond Wildlife Management Area in the rural town of Dunbarton noticed something in the water. Authorities were called to the scene and recovered the body of a young girl from the frigid pond. The remains were clad in a T-shirt with a Hampton Beach logo and an arrowhead necklace with rhinestones, items Sonya was last seen wearing. The body was identified as that of Sonya Moore.
An autopsy confirmed that Sonya had been the victim of a homicide, though the specific cause of her death was undetermined due to the condition of her body after being submerged for a significant period. The medical examiner concluded that she died as a result of "homicidal violence of an unspecified type." Despite the ruling, the investigation into her death has yielded no arrests and the case has grown cold over the decades. No suspects have ever been publicly named in connection with her murder. The New Hampshire Cold Case Unit continues to seek information from the public, leaving Sonya Moore's case officially unsolved and her killer or killers still at large.
