ADA, Mich. — During a wrestling meet at Forest Hills Central Middle School, Deanie Peters told her mother that she needed to use the restroom, got up, and walked away.
That was Feb. 5, 1981.
Her family has been searching for answers since.
Monday's anniversary restarts an all-to-familiar cycle for her family, as they process losing her again and again.
“Today just kind of comes and goes for me, but the thought is always on my mind on this day,” her brother William Peters told FOX 17 Monday. “The more we get away from this, the years go, the harder it will be to bring anything.”
It would be decades before the first arrest would be made.
"James Frisbie made false statements while under oath pursuant to that subpoena issued to investigate a cold case homicide. He made false statements regarding information, knowledge, and/or his prior involvement in the investigation, including but not limited to statements he made to law enforcement and others about possible suspects and or witnesses,"
—Court documents in perjury case filed against James Douglas Frisbie relating to Deanie Peters' disappearance
Perjury— the only charge in a homicide investigation then ongoing for 40 years.
Now 64-year-old James Douglas Frisbie was arrested in 2021— his defense attorneys continuing to fight the charges.
Cathy Pyle, Deanie's half-sister told FOX 17 that she had a hard time even comprehending the idea that someone might face justice all these years later.
“I thought with him being arrested things would move quicker; we'd get answers,” she recalled from her home in California Monday. “It was a sense of renewed hope that justice would be served, that we would find out the story.”
Documents filed in the perjury case against Frisbie outline allegedly conflicting statements made over the years and his apparent interference with the investigation.
"James Frisbie also willfully impeded and interfered with other witnesses by instructing them to not bring their phone to scheduled investigative subpoenas. Two of those witnesses did not bring their cellular device because of those instructions. One of those witnesses also provided false statements about his cellular phone while under oath, but later changed his statement to avoid perjury."
—Court documents in perjury case filed against James Douglas Frisbie relating to Deanie Peters' disappearance
Frisbie allegedly told detectives in 2000 that he "didn't know anything about the Deanie Peters case."
By 2002, he reportedly told a detective he had been hearing rumors about the disappearance, advising he heard she had been murdered— going so far as to provide a possible burial location.
In 2008, Frisbie allegedly told police of multiple people he thought could be involved, including a former employee at the sign shop he ran.
"I would be lying if I said it didn't bother me, but I hope things come out of this that help everyone for the better," Deanie's brother, William Peters said.
Still, Peters remains hopeful that they will one day get answers about his sister's disappearance.
"It is nice to know the community is not giving up; law enforcement is not giving up," William said Monday. "It still seems to be important to the people who know."
Frisbie's perjury case is still moving through the court system, and he has never been convicted on anything related to the investigation.
