At the age of 6, Katherine Korzilius seemed to be leading a charmed life. She lived in a good neighborhood in Austin, Texas, with her loving parents, Nancy and Paul, and her brother Chris. Her father was a personal manager for rock star Jon Bon Jovi.
Nancy and Paul’s world came crashing down on August 7, 1996. It was Paul’s birthday. He was working at his office in New York City. Nancy and the kids had spent the day running errands around Austin, picking out a gift for him. According to Nancy:
“It was very quiet here in our neighborhood, as it usually is. In fact, I can remark that it was exceptionally quiet that day.”
On the way home, they stopped to pick up the mail. It was a ritual Katherine looked forward to. As usual, Katherine asked if she could walk home and Nancy said that would be fine. Nancy said she knew it was Katherine’s way of saying she was a big girl:
“I had allowed Katherine to do that because I knew she was ready to be more independent, and she had done it before.”
Nancy and Chris drove home one way, while Katherine walked home in the opposite direction, which was the shorter way home. Nancy said that both her children had made the same walk before:
“It’s a short walk, probably less than a quarter of a mile. When Chris and I got home, we unloaded our car and we started putting our packages away.”
Chris told his mother that he could not find Katherine at home. So Nancy told him to go out to the road to find her. According to Nancy:
“He came back in just a very short period of time, a few minutes, and he was crying, and he said, ‘She’s not there, Mom.’ We got in our car and drove right next door to our neighbors. I ran down the steps to their front door and knocked on the door. Their son answered.”
The boy at the door said that he had not seen Katherine. It was at that moment that Nancy and Chris said they knew something terrible had happened. Minutes later, Nancy found Katherine’s body in the street:
“I could tell that she was unconscious, but she was breathing. I knew it was too hot to leave her on the pavement. I know that it’s never a good idea to move somebody if you don’t know what their injuries are, but I just couldn’t leave her there. And I think having driven her to the emergency room before, knowing the way very well, I felt confident that I was able to drive that drive.”
“Katherine was on a ventilator to keep her breathing, but she was brain de*ad. It wasn’t a matter of her being in a coma or being unconscious. Her brain had died.”
Katherine’s father, Paul:
“I arranged for a charter aircraft so I could come directly home, but in the end it was too late anyway. I arrived at 12:30 in the morning, and I believe she was pronounced de*ad at 11:30 that night, an hour before my arrival.”
From the start, everyone assumed that Katherine was the victim of a hit-and-run driver. However, as police searched for the suspect, other disturbing theories began to surface. Katherine had left her mother’s car headed in one direction on Elder Circle, but less than ten minutes later she was found on the opposite side of the circle half a mile away. And the medical examiner’s report only deepened the mystery. He determined that Katherine had not died from a hit-and-run accident. According to R. Bavardo, the Medical Examiner of Travis County:
“The injuries that Katherine sustained could have been the result of either jumping from a moving vehicle, being thrown from a moving vehicle, or falling from a moving vehicle. The type of injuries that we expect in these circumstances would have been the same.”
If Katherine did tumble from a moving vehicle, whose vehicle was it? And was she pushed or did she fall? Katherine’s father recalled a theory put forth by the authorities:
“One of the theories that investigators proposed was that somehow Katherine had jumped on the back of our vehicle without Nancy’s knowledge. And as the vehicle drove around Elder Circle, she had fallen off, which was a way to explain where she was found in Elder Circle, which is completely opposite of where she would’ve been on her normal route.”
The Korzilius family was stunned. Was it possible that Nancy was responsible for her daughter’s de*ath? Paul and Nancy hired their own private investigator, Barbara O’Brian. According to Barbara, that scenario was hard to believe:
“The problem with that is, it’s a hot August day. This whole car would’ve been very, very hot. There’s only one place to hold on to. And the door is the only other place to hold on to. And it opens when you get a-hold of it. She also had a broken left thumb and she had a splint on her thumb. So it would have been extremely difficult for her to get a hold on anything, and her mother would’ve seen her in the rear-view mirror.”
The Korzilius family has their own theory. They believe their daughter was abducted and mu*rdered. A search of a vacant, overgrown lot just 30 yards from the mailboxes may have provided a crucial clue. According to Barbara:
“A few days after Katherine’s de*ath, the investigators did bring in the K-9 unit and search the area. They did pick up her scent over in this vacant lot, which would indicate that she was coming in this direction from the mailboxes, taking the most direct route home. The scent was lost, however, which tells us that this may have been the point where she was abducted or the injury took place, but she was then later moved where she was found by her mother.”
Nancy said that it seemed as though Katherine had been placed on the street deliberately:
“Her hair was smoothed down. Her shirt was straight. Her shorts were straight. Her toes were pointed straight. Her sandals were on. I know someone moved her, and I know someone laid her there for me to find.”
After all the investigations and speculation, the cause of Katherine’s de*ath remains a mystery. In the quiet neighborhood on Elder Circle, her memory lives on. Katherine’s neighbors have planted a tree and placed a plaque in her name. Family friend Jon Bon Jovi:
“I think if Paul and Nancy, as parents, knew how it happened, perhaps it could help them with the closure of this tragic event. Nothing that anyone can say or do is ever gonna bring their daughter back to them, but it’s twice as hard not knowing what happened.”
Nancy Korzilius:
“I think of families of people who are missing in action. Well, they’re not here, but what happened to them? And that’s exactly, to a certain extent, how I feel about our daughter. I had Katherine’s body, but something happened in the last 15 minutes of her life and I don’t know what that was.”