The Girl Behind the Picture: Who was Trudy Appleby?

MOLINE, Ill. (KWQC) - Trudy Appleby is more than a 29-year-old mystery.

The Quad Cities community has spent nearly three decades looking at the same photo of Appleby. Her case has cast a dark shadow over the area.

Beyond a missing persons case, she was a daughter, a friend, and a niece.

To the people who knew her best, she was love and hope.

“She was a happy, happy girl. She was smart, very smart. She had her wits about her,” recounted her aunt and uncle, Anita Parkinson and Ray Eddleman.

Trudy and her mother, Brenda, moved back to the Quad Cities from Utah when she was a baby. Growing up, she loved to be outside. Eddleman says she was always outside playing and loved to go camping with her family.

“She wasn’t shy, she was silly, she was goofy, liked to have fun,” says Parkinson.

For Eddleman, she was more than a niece. Only twelve years older, he says, she was more like a friend. They had many things in common, like their love for music.

“I would always listen to my rock and roll tapes, Trudy was always listening,” says Eddleman. “If I didn’t have it playing, she would have it playing.”

While her family enjoys spending time talking and remembering Trudy, the fact that her life was cut short is always there.

“I had her in my wedding, okay,” says Parkinson. “And that was really neat, you know, but thinking later, we didn’t realize how special that was because I got married in ’93 and then you (Eddleman) got married in ’98 and she was gone.”

Her aunt and uncle wished they remembered more.

“In 29 years, I’ve forgotten more memories than I wish I would have, if I would’ve known this was going to be 29 years long, I would’ve wrote stuff down,” says Eddleman.

While the family now waits for the trial to begin for the man accused of murdering Trudy Appleby, their true desire is to be able to lay her to rest next to her mother.

They ask the community to come forward if they have any information.