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Comment by Brenda on October 24, 2011 at 10:47am

February 11, 2009 9:32 PM
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Kristine's Story
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(CBS) For three years, the disappearance of her sister has consumed Kathy Kupka's life.

By now, she has accepted the sad fact that her sister was probably murdered.

But what she will never accept, she says, is that someone is getting away with the murder. And, reports 48 Hours Correspondent Erin Moriarty, Kupka believes she knows exactly who it is.

The organizer of a group for relatives of missing people, Kupka says she knows her sister well. "She just doesn't not come home. She calls me all the time," Kupka says.

The man she blames for her sister's disappearance is Darshanand Persaud, known to everyone as Rudy. He was Kristine Kupka's chemistry instructor at college.

In 1998, Kristine was 28 years old and an honor student. She worked as a waitress and dreamed of becoming a civil rights lawyer.

Despite her busy schedule, she still found time to call her sister every day. And she called her mother, Elaine Bodell, at least once a week.

Bodell says she talked to her daughter about everything: "She was always forthright, honest, and she trusted."

Break the Case
If you have information on the whereabouts of Kristine Kupka go to the family's Web site: kristinekupka.com
In the weeks before her disappearance, the main topic of conversation was always the mysterious new man in Kristine's life.

According to the Kupka family, she and Persaud didn't date while he was her teacher. But when the semester ended, the relationship began.

"The guy is intelligent and good looking. That appealed to her," says Kristine's mother.

Her sister describes the relationship with Persaud as a "crush", saying it was "initially not a big deal."

But when she brought him home to meet her roommates, not everybody was as taken with Persaud.

Ozlem Ackadag was Kristine's close friend as well as her roommate. She says she had an immediate distrust of him: "He is good looking. But his eyes...his eyes are really cold."

If that was true, clearly, Kristine didn't see it. And in the summer of that year, Kristine told her friends and family what she thought was good news: she was pregnant with Persaud's baby.

But according to Ackadag, Persaud did not want any involvement with either Kristine or the child.

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Ackadag says the reason was, in part, cultural. Persaud and his family are Guyanese immigrants; his father is a Hindu priest. He reportedly told Kristine he would be disowned and kicked out of the family home if anyone found out about the pregnancy.

"He just went crazy and said 'No, it's going to ruin my family. I want nothing more to do with you,'" says Kristine's mother.

But there was something else that took Kristine entirely by surprise: Rudy Persaud was married.

Says Kathy Kupka, "She was so shocked when he told her he was married. It was shocking. We were all shocked."

Ackadag says Persaud tried to convince her to have an abortion, adding, "it didn't make any difference how much he ranted and raved, she was going to have this baby with or without him."

There was one thing she did want from Persaud. "She was very clear that she was going to put Rudy's name on the birth certificate and that he might be responsible at some point when she went to law school for helping with money,"says Kathy.

And that, Kristine told her friends, made Persaud absolutely furious.

"I spoke to her four days before she disappeared and she said 'if anything happens to me, it was Rudy who did it. Just go to the police, because Rudy did it to me,

Comment by Brenda on October 24, 2011 at 10:45am

A break in Kristine Kupka case is a ray of hope for sister of missing college student
BY PATRICE O'SHAUGHNESSY
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER
Sunday, March 07, 2010
At no small price, Kathy Kupka has made it her life's mission to get justice for her vanished younger sister, Kristine.

Now, after eight years of waiting, Kupka may be close to realizing her long-held hopes that the killer will pay. Or at the least she'll get some measure of comfort in finding physical traces of Kristine.

Since the pregnant Baruch College honors student disappeared on Oct. 24, 1998, Kupka has passed out flyers, rented a billboard along the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, hounded the suspected murderer, held prayer vigils and visited the suspected site of Kristine's murder or entombment.

http://articles.nydailynews.com/2010-03-07/local/27058222_1_phone-n...

Comment by Brenda on October 24, 2011 at 10:44am

Dig for missing student Kristine Kupka's body continues at Queens store
BY DANIEL ROBERTS AND JONATHAN LEMIRE
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITERS
Saturday, March 06, 2010

The search for the body of a long-missing Baruch College student turned up empty again Friday as investigators continued to dig up a Queens basement.

Kristine Kupka, 28, was five months pregnant when she disappeared in October 1998 and suspicion immediately centered on her married lover and a Jamaica store owned by his cousin.

After more than an 11-year delay, detectives were finally given access to the Liberty Ave. site after the store changed hands - but three days of digging have not produced any results, police said.

http://articles.nydailynews.com/2010-03-06/local/27058181_1_cadaver...

Comment by Brenda on October 24, 2011 at 10:43am

Investigators search Queens basement for remains in Kristine Kupka case
BY OREN YANIV AND JONATHAN LEMIRE
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITERS
Friday, March 05, 2010
Investigators hope they are tantalizingly close to solving the decade-long disappearance of a pregnant Baruch College student - but two days of searching a Queens basement has yielded nothing.

Kristine Kupka, 28, vanished in October 1998, but her body has never been found. While suspicion has long centered on the married professor whose child she was carrying, he has not been charged.

Cold case detectives dug up the basement of a Liberty Ave. plumbing supply store Thursday, a day after a cadaver dog indicated a corpse was buried in the concrete.

http://articles.nydailynews.com/2010-03-05/local/27058164_1_cops-se...

Comment by Brenda on October 24, 2011 at 10:43am

http://www.kristinekupka.com/

Comment by Brenda on October 24, 2011 at 10:41am

Missing 13 Years today...