Missing Since: 1985-01-30 Location: Zanesville, Ohio
Barbara was last seen at her apartment in the 1000 block of Alice Street in Zanesville, Ohio on January 30, 1985. After she came home from work, her ex-husband, Jeff Frame, came over and said she had go see her divorce attorney immediately and sign papers. (Their divorce had been finalized just six weeks earlier.) Barbara told her three children she would go to the meeting, buy groceries, visit her mother who was in the hospital getting cancer treatment, and then talk to her landlord about some damage to their apartment. Then she would come home and cook dinner. She left home at 5:00 p.m. She never returned, and it turned out she did not really have an appointment at her attorney’s office. She has never been heard from again. The day after her disappearance, her car was found abandoned in the back of the parking lot on Linden Avenue. This was across the street from United Technologies, the company where she worked, but the car wasn’t parked where she would have normally parked it. Prior to her disappearance, she had gone five years at work without a single absence. Four days after Barbara was reported missing, her mother died of cancer. She did not show up for the funeral and no one heard from her. According to Barbara and Jeff’s daughter, Jeff was physically abusive towards Barbara and had threatened her life more than once. He lived within eyesight of her new apartment, and even after their divorce was final he would come over every day and try to convince her to return to him; their daughter described his behavior as stalking. After Barbara’s disappearance, Jeff stopped coming to her home and instead began harassing her family members. He took two polygraph tests about Barbara’s disappearance, but the results for both were inconclusive. Someone later reported that Jeff had come to him to ask for drugs that would interfere with the polygraph results. After Barbara went missing, Jeff was in trouble with the law numerous times and spent time in prison. Barbara’s loved ones don’t believe she would have left without warning, and they described her as a devoted mother who took good care of her children and wouldn’t have abandoned them. Her mother was dying of cancer at the time of her disappearance. Her case remains unsolved. Investigating Agency Zanesville Police Department 740-455-0785 740-455-0700 Source Information NamUs WHIZ News WBNS-10TV Ohio Attorney General’s Office Victims News Online Barbara Frame Missing The Zanesville Times Recorder Missing in Ohio Facebook Page for Barbara Frame NBC 4i Updated 7 times since October 12, 2004. Last updated April 30, 2024; details of disappearance updated.