DUNNVILLE, Ky. — Whitney Copley’s case has been unsolved for five years. While police said they have the answers, her family said they have received no information. Why is her case still open? And is there more to the young mother’s death?
"We have not had the best past."
When Teresa Meyer and Lisa Kerr were seniors in college, their parents divorced. Their father, a police officer in Dunnville, Kentucky, started a relationship with a girl their age. The two got married and had two children, one of whom was Whitney Copley.
Copley’s mother later left her father in 2007, an event that her sisters said led their father into a deep depression.
“He tried to commit suicide,” Meyer said. “The next weekend she comes home, tells him she wants a divorce, an argument broke out…she was shot and killed.”
Copley and her sister were without both of their parents—their mother killed, their father in prison. The two were adopted by their older sister, but her sisters said Copley went down a bad path.
“Whitney just, after that, started on a bad road,” Meyer said. “She got into drugs, alcohol and we really didn't know all this until later. I tried everything—sent her to rehabs, we did everything we could and just nothing seemed to help. There was something missing.”
Copley ended up having a child in jail. Her sisters said they tried their hardest to find her and her child help, but by September 2015, all they wanted to do was find her.
"My gut feeling from day one was she was dead."
Lisa Kerr said her sister left the house on a Monday afternoon. Knowing her sister had been hanging out with people she should not have, Kerr said she pleaded with her little sister to stay. She didn’t.
"By Saturday, I still hadn't heard anything from her, so I started messaging my sisters and saying has anybody heard from Whitney,” Kerr said.
None of the sisters had heard from Copley—and they all knew what it could mean.
"My gut feeling from day one was she was dead," Meyer said.
They asked police for help, searching for answers. Video footage from a gas station found Copley and two other men alive that Thursday.
"We pinpointed that she had left [a] party with these two boys and she was on her way back toward Dunville, and she was supposedly on her way home when the truck broke down,” Meyer said.
The truck had stopped right in front of the gas station early Thursday morning. Footage showed Copley walking toward the back of the parking lot with the two men. The men return, but Copley is never seen again.
They began searching for Copley in the surrounding area.
"Numerous people showed up that night,” Nick Hale with Kentucky State Police said. “I know there was state police, county, might even been city police as well as volunteer people.”
But no one found Copley. It was not until a year later that they would finally find something.
"They've never told us anything."
During a search in November 2016, Copley’s family finally found some answers.
"I remember we were searching a creek bank and one of the cops yelled 'I think we've found something," Meyer said.
It was Copley’s remains buried below leaves on a hill right behind the gas station she was last seen—an area her family said people searched directly after she went missing.
"It’s kind of shocking that she wasn't found right then," Hale said.
Her bones were sent to a forensic expert at the family’s request, but they were unable to get any answers on what happened to her.
Hale said all signs point to a possible overdose.
“Everything we've gathered so far—all of the evidence, all of the interviews we've conducted—it shows at this time that there is no foul play suspected and there [are] no criminal charges right now,” Hale said.
But the family said there had to be more to the story.
“There wasn't a whole lot of feedback from police,” Meyer said. “To them, she was found, it was undecided, they were finished.”
Kerr said they went years without hearing from police, the sisters under the impression the case was closed. They asked for her personal items discovered during the investigation as a final request, but they never heard anything.
“I filed an open records request through the office in Frankfort, and they start investigating and trying to figure out why we haven't got what we asked for,” Meyer said. “So then right before Christmas this year, she gets a letter back that said, ‘After researching this case we have found the case is not closed—and you need to speak to KSP Post 15, because they can explain to you.’”
"I feel like it’s after you started contacting them is when all this started happening."
The sisters received the news that the case was still open after the UNSOLVED team called asking for the same records. The reason the case was still open? A piece of evidence was still being examined.
The UNSOLVED team asked Hale, who said he assisted on day one but did not work the case, why evidence had yet to be examined.
“A lot of times they’re backed up,” Hale said. “It’s one of those things.”
According to the forensic crime lab director, though, the lab was waiting for KSP to provide a family "reference sample." The lab received DNA from the scene in 2017, but did not receive the sample to match it to until late last month.
The sisters said Copley’s case had been stagnant until the team started contacting KSP, going years without an update. Their first phone call from police did not come until after UNSOLVED called police.
“All we've ever asked for is people to cooperate with us. If we call, at least have the courtesy to call us back,” Meyer said.
Police said new evidence could come from the test, and with that comes new answers. They could not explain why it had taken the family so long to get any answers, though—something Copley’s sisters said they were accustomed to.
Now, they wait for results from the crime lab expected to be complete in the coming month.
"It shouldn't have to be like, you know,” Copley’s sister Melinda Gilbert said. “You're already going through too much—why should you have to fight to get help or get justice?”
The UNSOLVED team will continue to update this story as we learn more.
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