MESA, Ariz. – It took 26 years, but Kennewick, Wash., detectives believe they found their prey, a former credit union worker charged with absconding with $106,000 theft way back in 1983.
Barbara Kurz is accused of embezzling $106,000 from the Tri-City Medical CU, which she ran, and possibly $4,000 from GESA FCU, where she worked as an employee supervisor.
The now 70-year-old Kurz was 44 and a married mother of four when she left her family and credit union job behind and vanished in 1983, one step ahead of the law.
Kennewick detectives on Tuesday searched Kurz's Arizona home and found enough evidence to arrest her for the nearly three-decades-old crime.
Kurz has been living under an assumed name, Renee E. Fulgham, which was her youngest daughter's maiden name, over the past two decades, according to police.
Investigators tracked her to Arizona after doing numerous database searches on her given name -- Barbara Eileen Peterson -- and the Kurz name, along with a list of aliases that popped up.
On Feb. 14, 1983, two co-workers from GESA’s Richland office stopped by to find the safe unlocked, Kurz's personal keys in a filing cabinet, items from her desk on the floor and a necklace on the floor in front of the safe and Kurz not there, according to court records.
Lester Kurz told investigators that he'd last seen his wife at 6:30 a.m. She'd told him he wouldn't need to stop by the office on his way home, as he often did to pick up paperwork.
Kurz's 1977 Thunderbird was found that afternoon partially burnt in an isolated field. Also partially burned in the car were financial documents, gloves and a muddy pair of women's dress shoes. Keys and a hand-drawn map to Kurz's sister's home in Las Vegas were on the charred front seat.
Kurz separately called her husband and one of her daughters on Feb. 15, but reportedly ended her contact with relatives after that. In her call to Lester Kurz, she claimed to have been kidnapped.
But investigators learned that a routine federal audit of the Medical CU had been scheduled for Feb. 14 -- the day Kurz disappeared. Three audit appointments in the previous three months had been canceled under suspicious circumstances.
Authorities are working to have Kurz extradited from Arizona to face charges in Washington.
