Three year search for missing Kansas City area woman heats up
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For nearly three years, the mysterious case of Angela Green has remained unsolved.
But on Monday police stepped up their search for answers.
At age 51, the Prairie Village mother, a former elegant model in her native China, vanished in June 2019, as her husband, Geoffrey Green, reportedly told their daughter a series of tales about her whereabouts.
Angela Green had a nervous breakdown, was hospitalized, but then died of a stroke, the shocked daughter, then at the University of Kansas, said her father told her.
No, she has run away, he reportedly said later.
Nearly eight months would pass before Ellie, now 21, became convinced — as she first told The Star in her emotional 2020 story, “Ellie’s Anguish” — that her mother was dead, perhaps murdered, and her father was somehow responsible.
In a text to The Star, Ellie Green said she has not changed her mind.
Attempts to reach Geoffrey Green for a comment were unsuccessful. He has refused in the past to talk to police. A call to his attorney, Paul Cramm, went unanswered.
Ellie Green’s goal to get her mother justice has taken on new energy, with tips pouring into the Prairie Village Police since her story was retold in the March 31 edition of People magazine. In April, a true-crime YouTube host, Kendall Rae, dedicated a nearly hour-long episode on Green’s disappearance that has generated more than 1.1. million views.
Green’s story was the focus of a “Dateline NBC” episode in 2020. A GoFundMe page, run by Angela Green’s niece, Michelle Guo, has raised close to $25,000 of a $50,000 goal to possibly pay for private investigators or attorneys in the event the family would one day file a wrongful death suit.
New police action on the case
On Monday, the Prairie Village police sent out a public notice as part of Green’s on-going missing person investigation, noting that Angela Green was last seen on June 19, 2019 near her home in the 7600 block of Tomahawk Road in Prairie Village. She was known to drive a silver 2010 Ford Escape.
Police said they would be conducting interviews on Monday and canvassing the neighborhood. The police have been working with the Federal Bureau of Investigation on the case since Ellie Green officially contacted the police in February 2020, when she ultimately came to believe that her father was somehow involved, some eight months after her mother was last seen.
“I’m very grateful to have whatever help we can get and have more eyes on the case,” Ellie Green wrote in a text to The Star. “No one deserves to go missing and their story unheard. And hopefully, my father/his family will come to their senses and see the absurdity of the situation.”
As noted on the GoFundMe page, Guo contacted Prairie Village police after Ellie Green, her cousin, reported her mother missing to the family. “When the police went to the Greens’ house, Geoffrey claimed his wife was alive and well and had run away with a friend,” the site says. “He didn’t provide any details about this friend or the vehicle they left in. . . .
“Angela left her purse, phone, passport, driver’s license and car behind at home, and had not removed any money from her bank account since she was last seen. According to Ellie, her mother didn’t use a credit or debit card, didn’t go shopping on her own, and hardly ever left the house without her husband or daughter accompanying her. She was a stay-at-home mother and was devoted to Ellie, her only child.”
‘Never seen that’
“This case is obviously a priority for the Prairie Village Police Department,” Capt. Ivan Washington, a spokesman for the police, told The Star in an interview. “The FBI has always been a partner with us in the community. They offered some resources.”
Washington said that the media attention throughout the investigation has created numerous tips that they have followed up on. He would not say to what degree those tips have moved the investigation forward.
The fact that Green’s disappearance was not reported until nearly eight months after she was last seen was more than unusual.
“I can tell you in my 20 years working for Prairie Village, I’ve never seen that,” Washington said of a missing person report made so many months after a disappearance. “It’s odd. Usually someone is reported missing within 24, 36 hours.”
Two search warrants, one at the Green home and another at a storage facility, that were executed in March of 2020, led to no charges and no arrests.
“The Prairie Village Police Department refuses to let her name disappear into the wind. It’s important to us,” Washington said. “We’re going to investigate for as long as it takes.”
This story was originally published May 2, 2022 4:25 PM.
Eric Adler has won numerous national, regional and local awards for his reporting that often tells the extraordinary tales of ordinary people. A graduate of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in NY, he also teaches journalism ethics at the University of Kansas.
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