Reward Is Offered on Anniversary of Woman’s Vanishing

OXNARD — Dante Silveri holds little hope that his first-born child is still alive.

Little hope that his daughter, Kathy Silveri, who was 43 when she disappeared without a trace more than a year ago, will even be found.

But he hopes that a $50,000 reward offered by her family and the Sheriff’s Department will prompt someone to come forward.

When the anniversary of his daughter’s Jan. 12 disappearance approached earlier this month and there were no leads in the case, Dante Silveri went to Ventura County Supervisor John Flynn for help.

He told Flynn he had $20,000 he could offer for a reward. Flynn talked to Sheriff Larry Carpenter, who offered to match that amount. Kathy Silveri’s estranged husband, Gene Ball, added the final $10,000 to the total.

“We do this when we think that a reward can help attract attention to a case,” said Sheriff’s Capt. Mark Ball, who is not related to Silveri’s husband. “Especially in a case like this, that is a year old and does not have a lot of leads.”

Dante Silveri, a 79-year-old retired electrical engineer who lives in Inyo County, still has a difficult time talking about his daughter.

“We were very close, you know,” he said, his voice welling up with emotion. “I . . . I’m sorry. I talk about her so much, but I still can’t do it without getting a bit overcome. I think of her so often. I was so very proud of her.”

Silveri said he hopes his daughter is still alive, but he knows the odds are against that.

“We still cling to a one-in-a-million hope that she might be alive, but my common sense says that is remote,” he said. “I just hope someone would come forward so that we could know what happened to her.”

The reward is for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the person or persons responsible for Silveri’s disappearance.

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Silveri, a former X-ray technician, was last seen going door-to-door a little after sunset near her Silver Strand home asking neighbors to sign a petition, her father said.

Silveri kept to a regular schedule, running each morning and riding her bike to and from work, her family said.

After her disappearance, authorities found both her car and bicycle at the house, along with her money, identification, credit cards and cat. There were no signs of a struggle.

Gene Ball, who remained on friendly terms with Kathy Silveri after their separation, said the last year has been the worst in his life.

“It’s been really difficult for her father up there alone in Bishop and not able to really do anything,” Ball said. “We’ve tried everything. The reward is really what we’ve decided on out of frustration. . . . It’s a last-gasp effort. We just want to know what happened.”

Silveri’s friends in the tight-knit beach community still think of her and offer their sympathy to her husband. She helped form and was a board member of the Channel Islands Beach Community Service District, and she worked at Las Islas Family Medical Center in Oxnard.

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On the anniversary of Silveri’s disappearance, Bill Higgins stopped what he was doing for a moment of silence to pray for his friend of 20 years.

“I still wonder if we might see her again,” Higgins said. “Jan. 8 was the one-year anniversary of the last time I spoke with her. . . . It is hard for us, but my wife and I can only imagine the pain that the family is going through.”

Authorities said they still have few leads in the case.

“I’m terribly sorry to say that nothing has changed since soon after she disappeared,” said Sheriff’s Capt. Larry Robertson, who heads the major crimes division for the department.

After hundreds of phone calls and numerous false leads, Robertson said, the department still can only guess at what happened.

“We haven’t developed anything substantive,” he said. “I just hope this reward will spur someone to come forward with information.”

Officials still are looking for a man they believe had a date to go sailing with Silveri on the night she disappeared. They are asking that anyone with any information call Sgt. John Fitzgerald, lead investigator, at 654-2824.

At the time of her disappearance, Silveri was 5 feet, 3 inches tall, weighed about 105 pounds and had long, curly, brown hair. She was last seen wearing tinted prescription glasses and possibly wearing a blue Windbreaker with fuchsia trim. She also was wearing a Timex triathlon wrist watch.