Name: Peggy Rahn
Case Classification: Endangered Missing
Missing Since: December 29, 1969
Location Last Seen: Pompano Beach, Broward County, Florida
Date of Birth: October 21, 1960
Age: 9 years old
Race: White
Gender: Female
Height: 4'4"
Weight: 67 lbs.
Hair Color: Blond/Strawberry
Eye Color: Blue
Nickname/Alias: Unknown
Distinguishing Marks/Features: Freckles, small scar under right eye and birthmark on right knee.
Dentals: Not Available
Fingerprints: Not Available
DNA: Available
Clothing: pink baby doll bikini
Jewelry: Unknown
Additional Personal Items: Unknown
Peggy Rahn and her friend Wendy Stevenson (NamUs MP # 6692) vanished from Pompano Beach on December 29, 1969. The two girls had gone to the beach and had found each other at the water's edge. Around 1:00 p.m., after playing together, the girls asked for money to buy ice cream. They were last seen on the beach parking lot headed for the ice cream stand.
The first promising lead came about 12 hours after their disappearances. A store clerk at a 7-Eleven less than two miles from the beach where Rahn and Stevenson disappeared saw two little girls enter the store with a man around midnight. As the man shopped, the girls both in bathing suits waited nearby. The clerk gave police a description of the man they were with - he was white, in his 20's, about 6 feet tall, 200 pounds, with sand-colored hair, gray eyes and a bump on his nose. He drove a 1967 metallic blue Chevrolet. A few weeks later, the car was spotted heading north near Soperton, GA, but by the time police were able to respond, it was too late.
There have been many reported sightings of the girls. A caller reported seeing two girls matching Rahn and Stevenson's descriptions in a Riviera Beach camera shop on January 2nd. However, police failed to turn up any evidence substantiating the report. Ten days after the disappearances, a young girl stopped a Georgia police officer and asked him to take her home. Authorities were sure it was Rahn but a man convinced the officer to let her go.
A Pompano Beach construction company voluntarily tore up a seawall in the remote possibility that the two girls were buried underneath. The construction company tore up about 25 feet of the "groin," a wall extending from the beach out into the water designed to prevent erosion of the shore line. The wall was under construction at the time the children vanished.
In February 1970, authorities checked the notebook of Kenneth Guy Shilts, who was arrested on child molestation charges in an effort to determine whether he was wanted on sex charges elsewhere. Shilts carried a notebook indicating "how far sexually" he had gone with more than 50 girls throughout the southern half of the United States. Among the listings were "Peggy and Wendy - Pompano Beach". Additionally, papers found in Shilts' possession indicated he may have known about the girl's disappearances. Most of the girl's names in the notebook were from Florida or California, with some states in between with the notebook apparently covering a period of two to three years.
Gerard John Schaefer, Jr. was convicted of two murders in the 1970s but is believed to be responsible for the murders and disappearances of many other girls and young women in the 1960s and 1970s. Rahn and Stevenson vanished after being seen with a man fitting Schaefer's description. Schaefer denied being involved when he was publicly accused of the crime, but in a 1989 letter he boasted of killing and cannibalizing the two children. Schaefer was murdered in prison in 1995.
Agency Name: Broward County Sheriff's Office
Agency Contact Person: Detective Chris Blankenship
Agency Phone Number: 954-493-8477
Agency E-Mail: N/A
Agency Case Number: PB69-915468
NamUs Case Number: 4639
NCIC Case Number: Unknown
NamUs
NCMEC
Ocala Star-Banner
Facebook
Crime TV
Daytona Beach Morning Journal
Red Orbit
Times Daily
CUE Center for Missing Persons
Sarasota Herald - Tribune -
1/28/1970
,
9/6/1974
Added: 4/1/2007; Last Updated: 05-18-2022 - By: Htmlcnvtr
Questions or comments? Please contact appropriate member of the Area Team
** Listed information is from the time of disappearance.
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