Aaron Pate (courtesy NamUs)
Age at Report: 17 or 18
DOB: March 3, 1975
Weight: 145 – 150 lbs.
Height: 6’00″ – 6’02″
Race: White
Hair: Brown
Eyes: Brown
Incident Type: Endangered / physical
Missing From: Keota / Sigourney, IA
Keokuk County
Case # 02-099622
NamUs MP#: 6499
NCMEC #: 772107
Missing Since: March 16, 1992 or April 30, 1993
Aaron Michael Pate, 18, of Keota, Iowa, was reported missing to the Keokuk County Sheriff’s Office in Sigourney on April 30, 1993. According to NamUs (the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System), Pate was last seen on March 16, 1992 — just over one year before he was reported missing.
The Iowa Department of Public Safety’s Missing Person Information Clearinghouse lists Pate’s status as “Endangered / Physical.”
Aaron is described as a 6-foot white male, weighing 145-150 pounds, with brown hair and brown eyes. He has moles on his back and a one-inch scar on his right wrist. He also has a pierced left ear and wears glasses.
According to a Cedar Rapids Gazette obituary dated November 28, 1999, Pate’s 21-year-old sister, Christine Celeste Kirkpatrick, died Tuesday, November 23, 1999, in Cumming after a sudden illness. An obituary for Kirkpatrick dated two days earlier stated she died of a gunshot wound.
Pate’s other relatives include his mother, Phyllis Kirkpatrick of Keota; his father, Randall Pate; a sister, Jennifer Miller of Keota; and a brother, Ian Pate of Cedar Rapids.
On November 14, 1993, the Gazette reported that Phyllis M. Kirkpatrick, 46, of Keota, was fined $325 after pleading guilty to bodily injury assault. Keota police investigated the June 19, 1993 incident.
According to NamUs, dental information / charting is available and entered, and tests submitted for a DNA sample are complete.
If you have any information regarding Aaron Pate’s unsolved disappearance, please contact the Missing Person Information Clearinghouse / Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation at 1-800-346-5507, the Keokuk County Sheriff’s Office at 641-622-2727, or Iowa Cold Cases via our Contact form.
I saw this myspace page:
In it, Aaron’s sister states: “I made this profile for the soul purpose of trying to find my brother, Aaron Michael Pate, born March 3rd, 1975, left Keota April 30th, 1993. Aaron- Perhaps one day you’ll do a google search on your name and find this. I’m on my own now, completely disconnected from our mother.”
Sounds to me like Aaron’s mother was probably a toxic person. Toxic people score high on Hare’s psychopathy checklist. Has his mother been looked at as a suspect?
Also, an obituary for his sister back in 1999 says he lived in Illinois. It was published November 28, 1999, in The Gazette (Cedar Rapids-Iowa City), on page 4:
“Christine Celeste Kirkpatrick,21, died Tuesday, Nov. 23, 1999, in Cumming following a sudden illness. Services: 1 p.m. Wednesday, Powell Funeral Home, Wellman, by the Rev. Larry Brown. Burial: Wellman Mennonite Cemetery. Friends may call after 10 a.m. Wednesday at the funeral home.
“Survivors include her mother, Phyllis Kirkpatrick of Keota; a sister, Jennifer Miller of Keota; and two brothers, Ian Pate of Cedar Rapids and Aaron Pate of Illinois.”
A November 26, 1999 obituary for his sister said she died of a gunshot wound, but two days later, a November 28 obituary said she died after a sudden illness. I’m not sure why the obituary was changed.
Also, the November 14, 1993 Cedar Rapids paper says (regarding Aaron’s mother) that “Phyllis M. Kirkpatrick, 46, Keota, was fined $325 after pleading guilty to bodily injury assault. The incident occurred in Keota on June 19 and was investigated by Keota police.”
It would be nice if this case could be reopened and the surviving siblings given the chance to fully discuss what may have gone on in the home. Aaron’s sister’s Myspace page suggests that the mother was a real piece of work. If she was a toxic, personality-disordered individual who contributed to her son leaving home and thereby coming to some harm, she should be exposed for it, even if the ultimate perps are never caught.
Regarding Christine’s obituary, why did it state that Aaron was in Illinois? Did the (obit) writer know something they haven’t told law enforcement?
And also, why isn’t there a photo of this individual?
The number one person who should be questioned regarding Aaron is our father, Randall Pate. His statement would answer a lot of questions.
Hi there,
Could you please delete my above postings? I don’t want to offend the family . Thanks.
Andrea, you are just now worrying about offending the family a year and a half after you first posted? Maybe you should think of things like that before you fire off multiple entries.
I’ve asked Andrea to reconsider her request to have her comments deleted, because even though she asked some tough questions, they are still important questions that needed asking. And though I’ve since found a photo for Aaron (courtesy of the NamUs website), her question about a photo cannot be emphasized enough.
Right now, as of April 29, 2013, there are 341 individuals listed as “missing” on the Iowa Dept. of Public Safety’s Missing Person Information Clearinghouse website. Of those 341, only 71 have photos — roughly 20% of all reported missing persons — simply because the respective law enforcement agencies have not been provided photos they can pass along to the dedicated workers at the MPIC.
When a loved one goes missing, his or her general welfare is such a concern that many family members don’t think to bring along a photo when filing a missing persons report. That is quite understandable. Still, photos “can” be provided to LE officials after reports are already filed, and those agencies in turn will pass along the photo to the MPIC where it’s added almost immediately. (They add and delete cases and make updates on a daily basis as the info is provided to them.)
Whether it’s a missing son, daughter, brother, sister, or whomever, photos (the more recent, the better) of missing persons are critical to any case. How does one “spot” a reported missing person if one doesn’t know what he/she looks like? (That is, outside the community where the MP might be known and recognized.)
Photos may be provided to LE or the MPIC by anyone; you needn’t be the one who filed the missing persons report. If you know of a classmate or co-worker or anyone else who’s gone missing and happen to have a photo, please make it available to your local police department/sheriff’s office. Whether you deliver it in person or scan and send via e-mail, it could make a huge difference in a case and perhaps even save someone’s life.
Here at Iowa Cold Cases, we’ve got some case summaries where the victim’s photo is “really” bad — meaning it’s likely an old black and white scanned from archived newspaper articles. But, we believe any photo is better than no photo at all. (And if you have a better image than what we’re using, please feel free to send us the cleaner/sharper image, and we’ll make sure you get credit for providing it to us.)
As always, we thank our readers for taking time to comment on this case, and ask that comments remain civil and focused on the case(s) law enforcement officials are still trying to solve.