Family takes action to revive 35-year-old cold case of Elisa Roberson in Aransas Pass

ARANSAS PASS — The house at 431 S. Whitney St. in Aransas Pass is about four blocks from Kieberger Elementary School — a six-minute walk along Goodnight Avenue.

It was along that unassuming stretch of pavement that 13-year-old Blanca Elisa Roberson, who was known by her middle name, was last seen walking to meet a friend on the afternoon of Aug. 6, 1989.

Thirty-five years later, the case of the missing woman is still open. Aransas Pass police detectives have followed reported theories and tips.

The Roberson family, exasperated by the lack of resolution of the case, began investigating it on their own, hiring a private investigator to help them obtain public records on the case.

While many questions are left unanswered, the case took a turn in 2016 when investigators with the Aransas Pass Police Department Criminal Investigation Division brought in a team from a search and recovery nonprofit organization to assist detectives with forensic search efforts, turning up new evidence, they say, that led them to update the case file on the missing woman.

Now, the Robersons are imploring the police to come forward with that evidence, saying it could help uncover what happened to Elisa on that Sunday years ago.

All the roads that lead to the Aransas Pass police station

Linda Thompson joined the Aransas Pass Police Department in 1979.

About 6,500 people lived in Aransas Pass around that year, U.S. Census Bureau records show, and Thompson knew the Robersons fairly well, interacting with them about once a week, she said.

Elisa was born in Nicaragua, the native country of her mother, Marina, on Jan. 12, 1976. Elisa never met her biological father, Rufino Hurtado, who died when she was a baby. Marina was working at a restaurant when she met Eugene Roberson, an employee with Gulf King Shrimp Co. who was sent to the country to pick up a shrimp boat that was being repaired. The couple got married and moved to Aransas Pass together. Because Marina didn’t speak English, Elisa served as her translator.

Thompson always saw them with each other, she said.

Marina had another daughter, Ruby, born in 1977, and two sons, Tony and Alex, born in 1978 and 1984. She and Eugene got divorced when the children were young, and Marina began a relationship with a man named Ralph Gonzales, who was Alex’s father.

Ruby Roberson Hall has fond memories of spending time with her siblings on the tree-lined streets of their neighborhood, which was in a quiet area tucked away from the highway. They would spend countless hours playing, riding their bikes and visiting the harbor.

“I loved hanging out with Elisa,” she said. “She was older and cooler, and I was the bratty little tag-along sister."

A next-door neighbor and friend of the family, Lawrence “Red” W. Barker, who built the house on Goodnight Avenue where he has lived since 1953, recalled during a sit-down interview with the Caller-Times that while the neighborhood was home to older residents, many more children played outside in the 1980s.

He said he remembers Elisa walking to visit her friend on a regular basis before she went missing, often passing by his house.

Thompson said she knew something was wrong when the family came into the station the morning of Aug. 7, 1989, without Elisa.

Elisa left the house between 5:30 and 6 p.m. to meet Debbie Green, a friend who lived in the neighborhood. Their plan was to meet at Kieberger Elementary School, which lay between their houses. However, Elisa never showed up at the school, leading her mother and sister to search for her until dark, asking friends and neighbors if they’d seen her, before calling the police at 9:45 p.m.

According to a written statement that Roberson Hall provided to the Caller-Times, a police officer came to the Robersons' house to take a report, telling them Elisa had probably gone to stay at a friend’s house. He filed a Runaway Report, she said.

“There didn’t seem to be much urgency at that point,” she said. “He said that maybe she’d show up. Of course, she didn’t. We automatically knew something was wrong. Elisa was not the type to run away, and my mom was strict. We knew if we were supposed to be home at a certain time.”

A departmental policy required officers to contact Thompson immediately in cases where children were involved in offenses.

However, because the officer who took the initial report did not contact the lieutenant the night of Elisa’s disappearance, she didn’t find out until the next morning that the girl was missing.

“I can’t help thinking, had I gotten that report the night before, we would be writing a completely different story,” Thompson said. “We would have found Elisa.”

Nonetheless, Thompson initiated a full search, she said, and the quiet surroundings where the Roberson girls had ridden bicycles turned into a hectic scene, with explorers knocking on doors and search dogs tracking the neighborhood blocks. More dogs arrived with a search and rescue crew from Dallas/Fort Worth, covering the entire municipal area, she said.

As police roved in and out of the house on Whitney Street searching for clues, the Robersons passed out flyers at the local newspaper and searched alleys and Dumpsters. Roberson Hall’s father, who was on a shrimp boat in the Gulf of Mexico, radioed in to get back to the port to do his own search.

“I don’t remember the day she went missing, but the day after, people were looking for her,” Barker said.

According to Roberson Hall's statement, each of the dogs alerted authorities at Goodnight Avenue and Eighth Street, about one block west of Kieberger Elementary School.

It was enough of a clue for the dog handler to tell the Robersons that he thought Elisa had gotten into a vehicle at that location.

Still, while police followed up on many leads and questioned suspects, no suspect was ever identified in the case.

An important turn of events

In 2016, Roberson Hall's statement said, Aransas Pass police received a tip that Elisa was dead and that her remains were buried somewhere on the premises of 431 S. Whitney St. The Police Department did not immediately respond to the Caller-Times when asked to comment on the tip.

An extensive search of the premises followed, she said. Police brought in EquuSearch, a nonprofit organization headquartered near Houston that had evolved from a horse-mounted recovery team to a group that conducts ground searches employing cadaver dogs and ground penetrating radar to assist law enforcement with missing persons cases.

While the Robersons had moved out of the house in 1993, the current homeowners signed a written consent form allowing the police access to search their home and property, which Roberson Hall obtained through a public records request to the Aransas Pass Police Department, she said.

A professor at Texas A&M University confirmed that soil samples were taken from the Roberson residence and delivered to the university lab in 2016 based on the fact that the cadaver dogs alerted authorities there, but Aransas Pass police have not shared information about the tests that were conducted.

Roberson Hall said that while the police haven’t disclosed what was found at the Robersons’ old house, the blame still shifted toward their family.

In 2023, as the family pressed for answers, rumors began circulating on social media that the Robersons were involved in Elisa’s disappearance.

Eight years later, the case is open, and no updates on the investigation have been provided by police.

The San Patricio County district attorney, Sam Smith, could not be reached for comment regarding whether any charges have been filed in the DA’s office.

New investigators with Aransas Pass Police Department

Aransas Pass Police Chief Eric Blanchard joined the department in 2012, 23 years after Elisa disappeared.

While he declined to comment on the specifics of the case, he said one detective in the CID is currently the primary captain working on the investigation, and that the case has seen movement over the years. Different investigators had been assigned before he joined the department, including through the district attorney’s office and the Texas Rangers, he said.

The chief emphasized the importance of finding closure or justice for Elisa and her family.

“Anytime you have a child or elderly person who goes missing or there’s foul play or something like that, they’re very important,” he said.

For residents of Aransas Pass and beyond, Elisa’s story resonates with each year that she’s been gone.

This year, the family held a remembrance walk at Kieberger Elementary School on the Aug. 6 anniversary, with about 50 people in attendance, including an Aransas Pass City Council member and people who knew Elisa. Both Thompson and the family’s private investigator, Richard Norgard, spoke at the ceremony. The group retraced the route that Elisa took the day she disappeared.

This year, the Aransas Pass City Council also designated Aug. 6 as Elisa Roberson Remembrance Day.

Publicity has helped spread awareness about the active investigation and the importance of pursuing cold cases. Roberson Hall has worked to bring exposure to the case through a Facebook page , multiple podcasts, and a petition on Change.org. A team of people, from cold case experts to advocacy groups, has assembled in support, awaiting approval from Aransas Pass police to pursue leads.

The Robersons are holding the police accountable for their investigation.

After many denied requests from Roberson Hall to release 30-year-old records from the Police Department, the family hired an attorney in Corpus Christi, Steve Carrigan. In a written statement provided by the law firm Carrigan and Anderson LLC, and presented at a news conference held on Aug. 5, Carrigan stated that he was in the process of obtaining a hearing to get a court order from an Aransas County district judge.

“We are optimistic that the release of these records, coupled with the cold case experts that have been retained, will lead to the resolution of this disappearance,” the statement said.

After all these years, Thompson agrees.

“If the Aransas Pass police have something, they need to come forward now,” Thompson said. “If they have nothing, they need to step back, regroup and check the other properties. There is sonar and technology available today that we didn’t have 35 years ago.”

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This article originally appeared on Corpus Christi Caller Times: Family takes action to revive 35-year-old cold case of Elisa Roberson in Aransas Pass