The Disappearance of Katrina McVeigh (Rhode Island)

The last time Katrina McVeigh’s loved ones heard from her, she was making plans to attend a family wedding. But when the big day rolled around, Katrina was a no-show. Now more than three decades later, Katrina’s disappearance remains unsolved, and the theories about what really happened still linger.

The Phone Call

It was June of 1992 and it had been weeks since the family of 27-year old Katrina McVeigh had heard from her, and even longer since they’d seen Katrina in person. It wasn’t totally out of the ordinary to go long stretches of time without any contact, but then again, her family at least expected to see Katrina for a wedding on May 16th.

Todd Thibeault, Katrina’s younger brother, explained that she was making plans to be there, “ She went and bought a brand new dress for my brother’s wedding. It was either a day or two before then they had talked and she’s like, yeah, I’m gonna be there. That’s my brother,” Todd continued, “Well, she didn’t show up.”

Todd was 16-years old at the time and living with his mother in Woonsocket, Rhode Island. Both he and Katrina grew up in the Ocean State. 

“Everybody was pretty ticked off and thinking, you know, she went and did something,” he explained. “That’s not the first thing she had missed.”

It was true that Katrina had been going through a tumultuous time in her life, but she was working to get back on her feet. Whatever the reason she didn’t make it to her brother’s wedding, Todd and his family half expected a phone call with an explanation, or an apology, but the days went by without one.

“ Time went on, it would have been typical to two, three, four weeks before you’d hear from her again. And in between that time, my mom got a phone call from someone.”

It wasn’t Katrina. In fact, nobody knows who the caller was to this day…But what they said changed everything and began a several decade’s long quest for answers. 

“Tell Todd he can find his sister by the river bank,” Todd remembers.

The message cast the weeks without hearing from Katrina in an entirely different light. What did it mean she was ‘by the river bank’? Did something terrible happen? 

There were only more questions that surfaced as Katrina’s family tried to get in touch with her themselves, but she wasn’t anywhere to be found. When Katrina’s mother Charlotte filed a missing persons report with Woonsocket Police that June, she didn’t know yet that Katrina had already been missing for nearly a month. 

About Katrina McVeigh

Todd and Katrina are about 10 years apart so when his mother was working, it was big sister Katrina who looked after him. They spent a lot of time together and looked out for one another.

“You didn’t mess with little bro, and you didn’t mess with big sis, you know?” He smiled, “It’s just one of those things. We’re two peas in a pod, but completely different.”

Many of his memories with Katrina are the simple times, just two kids growing up in the 80s around Providence and Kent County, Rhode Island.  

“We spent a lot of time camping, we spent a lot of time walking. There wasn’t anywhere we didn’t walk.  Sometimes it felt like we walked the length of Rhode Island at times.”

By the summer of 1992, Katrina had long been out of her mother’s house. She’d gotten married and then divorced, and then married again in March of 1988 to a man named Richard McVeigh. They had two children together, and Katrina had another child from a previous marriage. They moved out of Rhode Island and lived in Maine for a while. 

According to her family, Katrina’s marriage to Richard was not a happy or safe one. Richard was controlling and abusive. According to police logs published in the Lewiston Sun-Journal, when Katrina and Richard were living in Maine in April of 1988, Richard was arrested and charged with domestic assault. He was released on personal recognizance on the condition that he would not associate with his wife for two days. He entered a not guilty plea, but it’s unclear how that case was resolved.

Todd personally witnessed one incident of physical abuse by Richard against his sister, and he called police. It was the same night Katrina decided to leave Richard for good. 

After their separation, and due to challenges Katrina faced that impacted her ability to care for her children, the kids were placed in the custody of Katrina’s mother while Katrina tried to find solid ground in her own life.

Russ Olivio reports for the Woonsocket Call that Katrina tried to stay at a shelter for battered women. Katrina believed she was safe there, until Richard showed up one day. He somehow found out where she was and came looking for her, and started making threats.

As reported by the Woonsocket Call, shelter staff told Katrina she was, quote, “deemed a security risk.” End quote. After that, Katrina was unhoused. The circumstances of the custody arrangement for her children allowed her to visit the kids anytime, but for reasons unknown to Todd, Katrina wasn’t permitted to live under the same roof as her children at the time. 

“There’s a place called Social Park, World War II Memorial Park. All us kids, we called it Social Ocean,” Todd explained. “At the time, the playground had these concrete covers stacked up that the kids used to play on, and for a while she was sleeping in those at the park.”

“So, every step she’d take, she’d get kicked back about three yards, whether it be from child services, whether it be from the shelter, whether it be from her circumstances when she had nowhere to go.”

Previous reporting has alluded to Katrina’s possible involvement in sex work and selling and using drugs, but as far as Todd knows and according to the source material I have access to for this case, Katrina was never arrested or charged with any related crimes. However, people she spent time with and eventually lived with were definitely wrapped up in that scene.

For a time, Katrina was staying at a residence on Lincoln Street. That’s where Todd saw his sister for the last time. 

“ I had showed up at the house on Lincoln Street that she was staying at. And, uh, I knocked on the door and I ticked off a couple people that I was there. I got a free ride down the stairs, didn’t care. She evidently wasn’t there, but she came over to tell me, Hey, I’m fine, she appreciated me coming to check on her, this, that, and everything else. We had a decent conversation. It wasn’t an argument or anything like that. But, I was like, you know, hey, you know, what do you need? The best a 16, 17 year old can say, you know. But, it was more of a brother sister conversation than anything. Hindsight being 20/20, I probably would have made it more meaningful than it was.”

Immediately before her disappearance, Katrina found housing with a friend named Judi Burton who said she could stay at her place while she figured out what was next. Katrina moved into Judi’s apartment at 295 Second Avenue in Woonsocket and that’s where she was known to be living in the months before she went missing.

Providence/Bristol Superior Court records show that Judi Burton had faced charges for possession of a needle and syringe in 1984, possession of a controlled substance in 1987, receiving stolen goods in 1989, simple assault and battery in 1991, and later, several drug related offenses which we’ll get to in a bit.

It remains a possibility in Todd’s mind that his sister was involved in or party to some of these activities knowing who she was living with.

Todd said, “When she went and did anything that may have been shady and whether it had been prostitution or dealing drugs, people make choices. I’m not excusing it if that’s indeed what was going on, but she was surviving. She wasn’t living. And she was at the bottom of the bottom at that point of her life.”

But even at the bottom, even when she kept getting knocked down, even when everything seemed to be working against her, Todd says Katrina kept going, doing whatever was necessary to survive until things got better. 

“ She wasn’t a person without hope. And she was a person definitely trying to get back on her feet. So, you know, it was just barely out of her grasp. She fell through the cracks on everything.”

Katrina McVeigh’s story continues on Dark Downeast. Press play to hear the full episode wherever you get your podcasts.