Trading wives? Doing cocaine at 12? Yup, both happened (and more)!

Some believe Barbara died by suicide. Others think she was murdered — possibly by her husband, who acted strangely and avoided questioning. Of course, a pretty young woman walking alone at night with a decent chunk of change in her pocket was at risk from other threats, too.

For years, her mother tried to reopen the case but got nowhere. She also was very suspicious of Barbara's husband, and wrote to him,  "All of this silence on your part looks as if you had something to hide concerning Barbara's disappearance ... You cannot believe that I shall sit idle during my last few years and not make whatever effort I can to find out whether Bar is alive or dead, whether, perhaps, she is in some institution suffering from amnesia or nervous breakdown."

In 2019, writer Daniel Mills published his theory that police did find Barbara's body in 1946, but misidentified it as someone else. If he's right, and Barbara did indeed die by suicide, then a life that began with such incredible promise ended in a deeply sad way.