Kelly Camargo was one week away from starting her junior year at Hamilton High School when she went missing August 21, 1993. The 16-year old left home for an evening of fun with a group of girlfriends. She told her mother they were going to a teen pool hall in Fairfield, but they ended in the the parking lot of a now-demolished bar in Hamilton called PJ Shooters.
"It's our understanding that she left there with some folks," Preble County Sheriff's Detective Dean Miller said, "Don't know if she knew them or did not know them, maybe met them that night but left that establishment that night and never returned home."
Later that night, Camargo was seen at The Camden Bar on East Central Ave. in Camden. It was the last time that she was seen alive. Camargo's mother, Donna Jones, reported her daughter missing the next morning.
"I know my daughter and I knew something was wrong. Definitely," Jones said in an interview at her Oxford home last week. "I mean, I didn't know she had passed but I felt something was very wrong."
Thirteen days later, her decomposed remains were found in Sommers Township in Preble County, just north of the Butler County line. The location is just a few miles away from the bar where Camargo was last seen in Camden. A father and son hiking in the woods found the body beneath a pile of brush.
Now, 22 years later, Preble County Sheriff's detectives are hoping DNA evidence processed with new technology will help them break the case. The evidence was recently delivered to the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation or BCI, a division of the Ohio Attorney General's Office.
"We would love to get a phone call from BCI that says we found 'A', 'B' and 'C' and we think we've got something for you,'" said Sheriff Mike Simpson. He said he would like to give Camargo's mother the closure that she needs and most of all, arrest those responsible for her daughter's death.
"Get them indicted, get them convicted and in prison where they need to be," said Simpson.
Donna Jones hopes that the DNA evidence will provide the answers she has wanted for more than two decades.
"It would mean a lot to have closure. Kelly was robbed of her life. I just want to know who killed my daughter and have justice," Jones said.
If you have information about the murder of Kelly Camargo, call the Preble County Sheriff's Office at (937)-456-6262.
